Military Medical System

USA Today ran a story on Friday, Nov 21 about substance abuse treatment problems at General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital in Missouri.

For many first time readers, this may be a sobering story that one would wish was isolated. Unfortunately, as a 6-year veteran of the military health system as a surgeon in the Air Force, the article did not surprise me at all. The military is a place where ethics and integrity are sold as guiding principles, yet at times the opposite is the case. New military physicians quickly find themselves navigating complex ethical mindfields such as the scenario described below that result in disappointment, burnout and attrition.

We've posted on the mil-civ conversion plans before. This is the general notion that uniformed physicians should be replaced with civilian contractors to save the MHS money in the long run. Is that really the case?

From the fake press release department:

Immediate Release
November 10, 2008

DoD Establishes Center for Recruiting and Retention to Improve Medical Staffing

This NavyTimes story from December 2006 is from the wayback machine but it is very relevant today. The story describes efforts to replace uniformed providers with civilian physicians:

The Navy says it will eliminate more than 3,000 corpsman billets and about 600 physician, dentist, nurse and other medical officer billets between now and 2012 in an effort to focus the medical corps on supporting military operations.

NextGov is running a story about "re-engineering" plans for AHLTA:

The Defense Department has laid the groundwork for a radical shift in the way it processes and stores soldiers’ and veterans’ electronic health records, planning to re-engineer a system a network it spent $6 billion and eight years developing in-house for one based on industry standards, commercial software and re-use of existing code that will serve Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department, top officials told Nextgov.

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