V E TE R AN S AFFAI R S & M I LITARY M E D I CI N E O UTLO O K
“Wherever I go, people go out of their way to thank me for the active duty and National Guard personnel who are holding the line, and administering shots. I’m so proud of our team, and I know the American people are grateful.” Let me give another example – National Emergency Tele-Critical Care Network [NETCCN] – is a telehealth system that lets us consolidate telehealth networks and manage a high patient capacity during an emergency or a national crisis. Early in the pandemic, both civilian and military hospitals were exploring how to manage in a “surge” event – if we needed to significantly increase beds, and have fewer nurse-to-patient or doctor-topatient ratios. NETCCN offers us the capability to work with the civilian sector to respond to public health emergencies by bringing remote critical care expertise to the point of care, providing e-consult support, remote home monitoring, allowing us to more safely adopt tiered staffing levels, and more. NETCCN is an example of providing us with more flexibility and agility in a crisis, and how we can link remote expertise to frontline providers by using secure, HIPAA-compliant applications on mobile devices. DHA really rose to the challenge with telehealth. But the real challenge probably was Operation Warp Speed. Let’s talk about that. The challenge was the disease, not the response. Operation Warp Speed was designed to get bureaucracies to move faster, and still not cut corners. On this score, it was a success. And lots of credit to Gen. [Gustave F.] Perna and the team at Operation Warp Speed for thinking through the logistics of the vaccine roll-out. From securing contracts, to ordering vaccine, to moving all of the products necessary to get shots in arms, they got most things right in an extremely unpredictable environment. While no one imagined a vaccine being available in such a short amount of time, in less than one year we have three vaccines approved under EUA [emergency
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use authorization]. When Secretary [Lloyd J.] Austin stepped into the Pentagon as his first day as Secretary of Defense, his first department-wide meeting was to go over our COVID response, and his top priority for the department was to help the nation defeat this virus. As of April 15, approximately 2.5 million total doses were administered to people eligible in DOD at 350 military vaccination sites around the world, and the amount of vaccine supply is just starting to grow. Separate from DOD immunization efforts, we have thousands of military members supporting FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] at mass vaccination sites around the country. For example, FEMA is rapidly opening vaccination centers across the country with the capacity to vaccinate from 1,000 to 6,000 people per day. I know FEMA is working with state governments to open additional sites to continue our mission to vaccinate Americans. That is our number one priority right now, to get this pandemic under control, and the only way to do it is if all of us do our part and agree to get vaccinated when it’s our turn. Why did FEMA come to DOD? It’s more than just easy access to staff. They know they are getting a cadre of disciplined, well-trained medical technicians. It’s a testament to our training and development programs. Wherever I go, people go out of their way to thank me for the active duty and National Guard personnel who are holding the line, and administering shots. I’m so proud of our team, and I know the American people are grateful. Increasing the medical readiness of combat forces and readiness of our military medical forces is at the heart of the effort to transition military hospitals and clinics that fall under DHA purview.
Can you share some examples of how readiness is or will be enhanced? In the DHA we like to say, “Judge us by our outcomes.” We’re still in the early stages of this transition, but I can share a great example. One of our MHS imperatives is to increase the clinical workload for our providers. Just like pilots looking for more flying time to sustain their skills, we need “reps” to keep our skills honed. One of the core components of a market approach is to look at health care from a “systems” perspective, and not just from the perspective of one service or one MTF [military treatment facility]. In the National Capital Region, we now have specialists working out of more than [one] MTF. One day at Fort Belvoir, one day at Quantico; or one day at Walter Reed, and one day at Fort Meade. What that does is widen the circle from where our patients come to us – for dermatology, for gastroenterology, for surgical referrals. It helps our medical teams with readiness by increasing the amount of, and complexity of, care our providers deliver. Speaking of the MTFs, there is a lot of movement in the effort to transform them. Can you explain a little about that? Military hospitals and clinics exist to keep combat forces ready to go to war, and to sustain the readiness, the currency, and competency of medical personnel to support wartime requirements. In the simplest terms, MTFs are “readiness platforms,” where medical professionals from the Army, Navy, and Air Force not only obtain – but sustain – their cognitive, technical, and team skills, especially because MTFs are our first line of medical deployment in support of military operations. We need to get this balance right, and ensure we have the right mix of clinical
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