The military needs a unified medical command, says lawmaker

Interesting read.

I don’t agree. Services don’t communicate well, and trying to get things passed across would make care worse.

It’s like trying to get all civilian hospitals on one provider.

A couple of thoughts on this one. I was blown away by my own misconception of military medicine when I returned to active duty following 9/11 and the ensuing, seemingly ill informed swinging of the BRAC Hammer. I expected a significantly higher level of knowledge and performance than what I found, particularly in emergency and critical care medicine. It took several years for the Defense Health Review Board to release their findings, which backed exactly what many of us “on the ground” were saying. Outside of a time of conflict, I do not believe that military medicine functions in a manner consistent with fiscal responsibility, the broad application of evidence based practices or in a manner that keeps providers proficient in low frequency, critical applications. I’ve watched as access to care became exponentially more important than level of care, while at the same time, the deployment of medical systems applications that cut that all important access to care by >50%. I have watched our inspection processes degenerate into a “review/evaluation of program management” concentrated on record keeping vs validation of capabilities. Physicians, Nurses and other members of the officer corps are often placed in situations that prevent them from maintaining peak performance (when compared to their civilian counterparts) because they have to participate in processes and activities irrelevant to their profession in order to be “competitive” with line assets. Fortunate for Aircraft Maintainance Officers, science and research do not unfold and change as often as medicine. Fortunately, a D model F-16 is a D model F-16. The dynamics of patient care are a little different and often drift from center. Additionally, as a maintenance officer, you’re not necessarily the one expected to figure out why the synchrophaser is not working right. Now, the politics behind why an H-60 flight physical changes based upon the service designation on your flight suit, I’ll never make sense of.

There are just too many reason why having a smaller, unified military medical command could work and save a ton of money.