With the Department of Defense’s reorganization of its health system complete, the Defense Health Agency should reevaluate its administrative structure and focus on ensuring that military treatment facilities are fully staffed, according to the Government Accountability Office.
As part of military health system reforms launched by Congress in 2016, the focus of the military medical commands shifted to supporting mainly active-duty military personnel and training for military missions, while DHA was responsible largely for providing care to non-military beneficiaries in military facilities and streamlining programs like administration, information technology (IT), logistics and training that once existed in triplicate under the separate Army, Navy and Air Force medical commands.
The reforms also included the management transfer of roughly 700 military hospitals, clinics and dental clinics from the Army, Navy and Air Force, which was completed in November 2022.
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With the arrangement, the military services are to provide personnel to staff hospitals and clinics while DHA is responsible for augmenting the uniformed providers with civilians or contractors, or shifting them from nearby military facilities.
But staffing military hospitals and clinics with uniformed providers has always been a challenge, given not only a nationwide shortage…
