Feedback Fridays

Feedback Fridays is a weekly forum that aims to connect the 502d Air Base Wing with members of the Joint Base San Antonio community. Questions are collected during commander’s calls, town hall meetings and throughout the week.

If you have a question or concern, please send an email to RandolphPublicAffairs@us.af.mil using the subject line “Feedback Fridays.” Questions will be further researched and published as information becomes available.

Medical

Q. I am a student in a local college and was assigned to attend a support group pertaining to my field of study, which is physical therapy.

As a military spouse with family ties to the military, I have an increasing interest in neurological disorders, specifically traumatic brain injury. I sought to attend a TBI support group at Brooke Army Medical Center or the Warrior & Family Support Center only to find that none exist. I tried reaching out to The Center for the Intrepid several times, but had no success.

My question is whether support groups exist for service members and their families at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston? And if so, how is the information being shared? If not, is this something that can be considered?

A. Thank you very much for your question. As host to the Department of Defense’s only Level I Trauma Center as well as The Center for the Intrepid, JBSA does in fact offer these kinds of support groups at the Warrior & Family Support Center at the Warrior Transition Unit at JBSA-Fort Sam Houston. The Warrior Transition Unit is open to suggestions for future groups.

For additional information, please reach out to 210-241-0811 and their staff will take great care of you.

Q. The Women’s Health/OB clinic at Brooke Army Medical Center is having issues getting pregnant patients scheduled during proper appointment timeframes.

For example, I am 28 weeks pregnant and was due for another appointment within four weeks but the soonest they could get me in was within 106 weeks.

Additionally, I have an Airman that was at 32 weeks who was unable to schedule her 4-week follow-up until 6 weeks out (which would put her at 38 weeks pregnant with no appointment for 6 weeks).  

When asked why there aren’t appointments, I was told there aren’t enough providers to cover the current number of patients.

I am concerned, not only for the well-being of myself and my child, but for every pregnant woman who is being seen there. When are there going to be enough providers for patients, or when are patients going to start being referred off the installation to ensure they get the proper care?

A. Thank you for your concern, and my sincere apologies for the delays you experienced in scheduling critical OB/GYN appointments. The OB/GYN clinic does its absolute best to address all patients requiring an OB/GYN appointment on a daily basis. This ensures the well-being and timely delivery of care to all our OBGYN beneficiaries.

In that effort, provider schedules are adjusted as much as possible to make sure all patients are seen. All OB patients require care on a set schedule of appointments throughout their pregnancy, so to ensure this happens, follow-up appointments are made prior to the patient leaving the clinic.

If no appointments are available, then the staff collects the patient’s contact information, finds an appointment, and contacts the patient with available appointment dates and times, usually within 72 hours.

Unfortunately, this does result in some delays in scheduling; however, please be assured that the appointment options provided are the soonest appointments available for that provider. Through this method, patients do not need to call the clinic or the CAMO to make a follow-up appointment. If appointments are still unavailable, a referral to the network may be authorized.

Installation & Facilities

Q. Would it be possible to install parade ground signs along/near Bong Avenue on JBSA-Lackland? Visitors are a bit confused searching for the parade ground during graduation day and pull into the parking lot behind building 1052.

When going to and from the parking lot we can always tell when someone is lost and don’t mind pointing them in the right direction. Signs with arrows would help guide visitors and eliminate the confusion.

A. Thank you so much for the assistance you and your team have been providing in guiding the families and friends of Basic Military Trainee graduates to the JBSA-Lackland Parade Field, and also for your suggestion to provide improved signage.

Following an assessment of the issue, our Civil Engineers validated the need and have installed new signage to guide visitors to the parade field in both the parking lot of building 1052 and at the intersection of Luke East and Bong Avenue. We believe these new signs will greatly assist our visitors in locating the graduation venue. Thank you again for the great suggestion.

Q. Are there any plans for installing water fountains around Warhawk Fitness center outdoor running track at JBSA-Lackland? I’ve seen many running track with at least two water fountains on the each side.

Daily runners like myself would really love to have fresh water instead of bottled water that we have to bring ourselves every time we go for a run.

A. Thank you for your question. The Warhawk Fitness Center Manager submitted a request to have water fountains installed at the track. However, that request is currently pending execution due to other funding priorities.

In the meantime, the great news is that since the Warhawk was made a 24/7 operating facility in August of this year, and track users have the option of using the water fountains located in the gym.

Q. My concern is that employees from building 2372 are occupying the Rocco Dining Facility parking lot at JBSA-Fort Sam Houston by parking there all day, and our service members and civilians are unable to park during breakfast or lunch because spaces are limited. However, there are plenty of spaces at the running track area across from Stanley Road.

A. Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding parking at the Rocco DFAC. Our Civil Engineers will work with the Rocco DFAC Facility Manager to determine the cost-benefit analysis of posting new signs to inform personnel that parking is reserved for DFAC patrons only.

CE will also connect the respective facility managers to encourage them to work together to alleviate the parking problem at Rocco. Thank you again for bringing this issue to our attention!

Q. The main entrance at the JBSA-Randolph Fitness Center is not handicap accessible. When can this situation be resolved? This facility has many Wounded Warrior functions, and it seems to be an obvious detriment for our troops.

A. Thank you very much for bringing this issue forward and for your concern for our Wounded Warriors and mobility challenged gym patrons. Our Civil Engineers assessed the facility and are in the process to correct this issue by installing an automatic door opener. CE is procuring the parts to make the fix. An automatic door opener and associated push buttons will be installed to improve accessibility for fitness center patrons.

Q. The new Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center has nice small restrooms. However, the sink faucets never had aerators installed. As a consequence, it is impossible to keep water from splashing on the countertops, floors, and yourself when the faucet is turned on, making a mess. Maybe there is a reason, but BAMC and other such buildings have aerators, and don’t have water splashed everywhere.

A. Thank you for sharing your concern. The Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center had removed the faucet aerators prior to occupying the new facility in 2017, based on internal organizational recommendations made at that time.

In light of the concern and comment, 59th Medical Wing Facilities Management, along with our CE team, have considered the matter, and decided to re-install faucet aerators in the public restrooms! Thank you for highlighting this as it is certain to improve the cleanliness and appearance for this heavily used facility.

Q. We have such a great set of installations, but we lack cohesiveness. What are the plans to improve cohesiveness amongst Joint Base San Antonio when faced with emergency responses? We minimally build mutual contracts, but what more is going to be done?

A. Thank you for your question. JBSA’s large population and geographic footprint do pose unique challenges in terms of emergency response operations.

While we work hard to ensure maximum cohesion across all of JBSA, we can always improve. Over the years, our JBSA Emergency Response and Management program has worked hard to collaborate across the region.

Today, we have 17 Mutual Aid Agreements, or MAA, with local communities to include Emergency Operations Centers, Explosive management with our Explosive Ordinance Disposal team, Fire Department response and more.

These are well-planned, managed, coordinated and trained efforts. We also follow an Installation Emergency Management Plan, as well as other response plans to facilitate consistent response throughout the installation.

Our Emergency Management team attends monthly City of San Antonio emergency managers and planning committee meetings. The 502nd ABW also cohosts an annual Defense Support to Civil Authorities briefing that includes key wing agencies, major mission partners and local civic leaders to address response roles as well as coordination and participation in joint exercises throughout the year. Again, thank you for your question and interest in emergency response and preparations.

Miscellaneous

Q. I have been a member at the Gateway Hills Golf Course at JBSA-Lackland for the last 10 years. When I first joined, we lost the greens due to our main irrigation water feed which burst without being repaired in a timely fashion.

Now the maintenance crew at Gateway Hills is having to spend a significant amount of funds and labor to fix sprinkler heads that are clogged with some debris that is coming through our irrigation lines.

Assuming we are to be supplied with “debris-free” reclaimed water from SAWS, why are we not holding a vendor responsible and accountable for not providing a service and instead using golf course funding to make these repairs instead of spending them in other areas?

A. Thank you for very much for your question.  Our Civil Engineer team contacted the San Antonio Water System, or SAWS, about this issue, and SAWS validated that the quality of recycled water provided for both the Golf Course and JBSA-Lackland Parade Field irrigation systems meets required cleanliness standards.

Fortunately, SAWS indicated that they are aware that debris may have entered the line during some previous repair work, which may explain the issue. SAWS is actively engaged with our golf course management team to come to a resolution. Thanks for bringing this forward!

Q. I previously sent a question inquiring about when network updates could be done and you were kind enough to respond.

But I, along with all of the other people here at JBSA-Lackland, have not been able to connect to online applications all day. I have restarted multiple times. I do not take my computer home. And before leaving work, I restart my computer and leave it on, and restart again when I start in the morning.

This problem is what we are currently experiencing is what I was referring to before. A lot of valuable time is wasted waiting for the network to come back up. When will this be resolved?

A. Thank you for your follow-up question to our discussion on network updates back in September.

Importantly, we also thank you very much for leaving your computer on overnight and regularly rebooting the machine so that applied patches and software updates can complete their installation process. This has improves the operation of your computer and preserves the health and security of the network that has been proven vital to the more than 46,000 JBSA-Lackland and JBSA-Randolph network users.

This recent outage not only impacted JBSA-Lackland and JBSA-Randolph, but also several other installations in the Pacific and other CONUS locations. We also greatly appreciate your patience and understanding as our communications teams assisted the Air Force Network Operations enterprise technicians in troubleshooting and repairing the latency and network outages this fall.

As always, if you experience any IT difficulties, please utilize the virtual Enterprise Service Desk (vESD) application on your Air Force computer or contact the 502d Communications Squadron directly for assistance. Thank you for taking the time to create healthy dialog regarding one of our critical resources.

Q. With all of the computer changes, there has been a new pop-up advertisement from our 502^nd Communications Squadron personnel making us cyber aware.

Can we use this same avenue to remind personnel not to use cell phones while driving on base, dim lights when coming towards the entry points, wear seatbelts, turn into the closest lane, etc.?

A. Thank you for sharing your suggestion! The recent cyber pop-ups you refer to were generated and directed by Headquarters Air Force to highlight cybersecurity during Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

At the local level, we usually send pop-up notifications out for weather events, natural disasters or other emergencies (including exercises), as well as other very limited uses.

While we try not to overwhelm our users with too many pop-up notifications, we will look for other ways to engage our target audience with the important messages you mentioned above.

Again, thank you for your suggestion and please be on the lookout for more safety-related articles in the JBSA Legacy newspaper, on the JBSA Facebook site and even through this venue.