The Madigan Army Medical Center Distinctive Unit Insignia (DUI), or unit crest, was originally approved for the Madigan General Hospital on 30 January 1970 and was redesignated for the Madigan Army Medical Center on 15 August 1973. A white escalloped shell that serves as the insignia’s “shield” is an image that signifies the protection of life, while the fir trees—associated with a robust and healthy life—symbolize the center and its promotion of wellness. Taken together, the trees and shell denote the organization’s location near Puget Sound (the shell) in Washington, the “Evergreen State” (trees).
Conjoined in the center of the shell, the fir trees stand for the close teamwork and cooperation of the organization’s highly trained members who put teamwork first in order to achieve the Center’s missions. The cross the tree trunks form is the universal symbol for aid, care, service, and mercy. And the fir trees have another, more esoteric reference: as a universal symbol of life, they allude to the neuropsychiatric field of medicine, the specialty of Colonel Patrick Sarsfield Madigan for whom the Center is named. “Care With Compassion” is the motto of the Medical Center.
Full guidance on wear of the DUI is found in DA Pamphlet 670-1,
Section 21-22, "Distinctive unit insignia" and 21–3(d) and (e),
"Beret" and
"Garrison Cap," respectively.
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Located on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Madigan Army Medical Center originally opened in 1944 as a temporary hospital for wounded military personnel. Today, it encompasses a network of U.S. Army medical facilities in Washington and California responsible for providing health-care services for more than 100,000 active-duty service members, their families, and military retirees.
The Center maintains roughly 220 beds for inpatient treatment, but it can expand to handle more than 300 in the event of an emergency or during a period of urgent need. As the U.S. Army’s second largest medical treatment installation, Madigan is one of just two designated Level II trauma centers in all of Army Medicine, and one of just four in Washington. And the medical mall complex, designed to handle outpatient visitors, handles nearly one million people per year.