Courtesy photo Col. Van Coots, commander of the Walter Reed Health Care System, accepts the Military Treatment Facility Excellence in Teaching Award (for a large facility) from Dr. Larry Laughlin, dean of the Uniformed Services University F. Edward Herbert School of Medicine, during the Military Health System Conference last week in Prince George’s County, Md.

More than 3,000 military and civilian medical personnel attended the week-long conference, designed to provide health-care professionals a platform to share knowledge and improve best practices.

Walter Reed received a $100,000 check for having a 5.4 percent growth in inpatient workload, which ranked WRAMC third among all Army medical centers.

Walter Reed also received the Military Treatment Facility Excellence in Teaching Award (for a large facility) during the conference. The award is sponsored by the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Md., and comes with a monetary prize of $5,000 from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation.

DeWitt Army Community Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., which is part of the Walter Reed Health Care System, earned the Military Treatment Facility Excellence in Teaching Award (for a small facility).

Col. Van Coots, commander of the WRHCS, and Col. Charles Callahan, commander of DeWitt, accepted the awards on behalf of their respective facilities.

‘‘Receiving two awards at the MHS conference was simply terrific,” Coots said. ‘‘It has been a while since WRAMC has won any monetary awards, and to be recognized for an increase in inpatient workload is really a recognition of all the hard work that goes on here on a daily basis.”

Coots said the teaching award ‘‘is a reflection of the strategic importance of WRAMC in ‘building the bench’ for military health care of the future, and we will continue to be a strategic asset even as we merge to create the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at Bethesda. The torch of knowledge will continue to burn brightly for the decades to come.”

Ken Frager, director of the media affairs division at USU, explained the criteria for earning the MTF Excellence in Teaching Award include, ‘‘the best overall support for our clinical teaching effort, strong command support, strong faculty participation and performance, and strong administrative support.”

Nominations are accepted for large and small military treatment facilities, Frager said.

He said Drs. Larry Laughlin (dean of the USU F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine) and Ada Sue Hinshaw (dean, USU Graduate School of Nursing), present nominees to USU president Charles L. Rice for consideration.

‘‘This is a ‘President’s Award,’” Frager said.

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