Army Col. Robert Oglesby, who normally works at Walter Reed, will have to commute back and forth between the two medical centers to manage his new integrated Rheumatology Department.

Capt. David Mazur, one of Bethesda’s own, will only need to commute until Walter Reed moves its Ophthalmology resources to the National Naval Medical Center campus.

Both military medical officers agree there will be more challenging obstacles than commuting, when it comes to integrating their departments. Mazur said it will be like, ‘‘merging two separate wire diagrams.”

‘‘We have been doing many things together,” Mazur said, ‘‘but we have been culturally separate in a lot of ways.”

He said there are a lot of moving parts and it’s hard to get it all to mesh, but some departments have led the way. He likened the integration process to a line of falling dominoes.

‘‘We are a continuation” of what has already begun, he said. The other departments are getting in line and preparing for their mergers, he said.

Oglesby said it will be difficult for the two services to work in a new environment and to speak the same language at first, but time will smooth the transition.

‘‘The easy thing for the Navy staff members [in the Rheumatology Department] is most of them trained at Walter Reed, so they know a lot of the Army methods and processes,” he said. ‘‘The hard thing for the Army [doctors] will be learning the Navy side of things.”

Mazur said he believes the Army got the short end of the stick, as it were. The integration process will be harder for the Army to assimilate to because they are required to move locations, he said.

‘‘The biggest thing that helps is working side by side. You spend some time together and suddenly [we’re] not just some strangers across Rock Creek Park who [wear] a different uniform,” Mazur said. ‘‘[Now], they’re your partners down the hall — which changes things pretty fast.”

In the long run, Oglesby said, integration will make things better for patients. He said once things like administrative issues have been ironed out, there will be no distractions from the care given to troops and their families.

‘‘We have a chance to make [integration work] by using an impressive faculty at both organizations,” Mazur said. ‘‘That’s our biggest asset. We have got world-class people and we can make this a world-class organization.”