Tuesday, November 21, 2006

ID Card Center gets kudos from hospital

The DeWitt Health Care Network recently recognized the employees of the Fort Belvoir Identification Card Center for providing 250 contracted DHCN personnel with ID cards in September.

Several representatives from DCHN visited the ID Card Center on Nov. 7 to recognize the employees.

“The ID card employees worked diligently to support a huge influx of contracted personnel from the Fairfax and Woodbridge Family Health Centers who required Common Access Card renewals on or before Oct.1, 2006,” said Freida Ridge-Hamilton, chief of DeWitt’s Health Care and Contract Support Division.

The Woodbridge and Fairfax Family Health Centers are considered extensions of DeWitt.

The ID Card Center employees came in early and remained at work late for several weeks to complete the processing of the cards. Jessica Creal, chief of human resources at the ID Card Center, was awarded with a coin for her work.

“I was surprised, actually,” said Creal. “We came in an hour early to process the [employee’s cards] from Fairfax and stayed an hour late in the afternoon to process the [employee’s cards] from Woodbridge.”

Creal and Joseph Pantelogous, director of human resources, each received a coin for coordinating a plan to develop and process cards for the contracted employees prior to the deadline of Sept. 30.

“CAC cards are essential to access computer information at the clinics,” said Ridge-Hamilton. “Without current CAC cards, employees at the clinic who service an enrolled population of approximately 47,000 beneficiaries would be unable to access health care programs required to provide health care to this population.”

Lt. Col. David Bitterman, deputy commander for administration at DHCN, added his thanks to the ID Card Center employees.

“It was vital that they get these CAC cards on time,” said Bitterman. “I’d like to thank you all for what you’ve done.”

DHCN hires contracted employees under many different programs to provide support to current operations, to establish new programs and to backfill deployments, said Ridge-Hamilton.