You have sustained an injury while on IDT status as an AR or ANG soldier. What do you do?

No medical care is rendered in the ARNG for Soldiers injured or who become ill while on IDT status. Of course those units with a medic or medical section can and should provide immediate life saving procedures that are trained and authorized to perform. If a Soldier (M-Day, Tech, or AGR) is injured or becomes ill while in an IDT status, including to and from their authorized duty (see AR 600-8-4), they are to be transported, by appropriate means, to an emergency room for stabilization and/or care of the injury or illness sustained.

During the IDT period, or shortly thereafter, an LOD should be input into the eMMPS LOD module. One caveat; it may take several days to several weeks to obtain medical treatment records from the facility that the Soldier was treated at.

The left/right boundaries for the input/initiation of an LOD in eMMPS are, in general, a set of orders for the Soldier (DA 1379 for IDT) and, the medical treatment record(s) for the Soldier WITHIN the dates of the orders/IDT. Those two documents are the only requirements for an LOD to be processed from Unit Admin (Draft), forwarded to Unit Commander (for approval), and sent to State Admin Review for final disposition.

Since it may take several days to weeks to obtain the medical treatment records for the Soldier, I advise my Unit RNCOs to create a hardcopy DA 2173 draft for tracking purposes only and not to enter the LOD for processing in eMMPS until all required documentation is available to be uploaded into the LOD record. The reasoning behind this is to prevent an LOD record in eMMPS from becoming overdue after 45 days in Draft status. This overdue status in turn becomes a derogatory KRI for the Unit and BN Commanders and is tracked by State and NGB DPRO metrics on the Commander’s Score Card.

There is quite a bit more detail to LOD processing in the ARNG but this hits the main points that can cause problems within the unit. I am in the process of creating BN SOPs on LOD processing that point out the differences from AD and ARNG LOD processing that are not covered at all or otherwise not covered well in AR 600-8-4.

One thing that many are not aware of is INCAP pay (Google it for the detailed info). This funding can be used for any day the Soldier receives care to treat their injury. Commonly, the Soldier will be taken to a MTF when injured at IDT, but they require follow-up care and they can be compensated as this usually means time off from their civilian job.