Full Spectrum Medical Readiness

Fit to Fly

The Air Force Medical Service mission is to ensure medically fit forces, provide expeditionary medics, and improve the health of all we serve to meet our Nation’s needs.

Readiness is critical in all that the AFMS does. It means being fit to fly, having healthy and prepared families at home, and ensuring Airmen have the equipment and expertise required to complete the mission.

Total Force Full Spectrum Medical Readiness includes all Airmen under the total force umbrella, from home station to deployed locations. AFMS supports the U.S. Air Force by providing trusted care to more than 320,000 Airmen. Outside of the operational environment, AFMS delivers health care to 2.6 million patients at 76 medical installations worldwide.

Each military treatment facility is a medical readiness platform, aligned with an operational wing that directly enhances the medical readiness of warfighters and their families.

The care we provide our beneficiaries enables us to sustain the readiness of our total force. Whatever challenges the world presents, we stand ready.

Total Force Capacity

Air Force medical research has led to major improvements in care for injured service members on the battlefield, during aeromedical evacuation, and in hospitals. Today, service members wounded in action have an unprecedented rate of survival. The Full Spectrum Medical Readiness capability that AFMS maintains facilitates these improved survival rates.

AFMS has a broad portfolio of readiness training programs to prepare individual medical specialists and deployable medical teams for reliable performance across the full range of military operations. The readiness portfolio spans from care provided within MTFs to specialized, advanced trauma training.

The Readiness Skills Verification Program establishes baseline skills required in a deployed environment. The Sustained Medical and Readiness Trained program expands training opportunities for skills requiring a higher volume and complexity of hands-on care than normally seen in MTFs.

Centers for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills, known as C-STARS, provide elite trauma and critical care training to groups of physicians, nurses, and technicians in Baltimore, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. Hundreds of AFMS medics have completed this advanced level of training and remain prepared to deploy and provide trusted care, anywhere.

Similarly, Air Force graduate medical education programs develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of highly qualified medical personnel while supporting the AFMS mission. These training programs deliver health care to our military members and other patients, ensure the competency and currency of medical personnel, and contribute to the readiness of medical airmen.

Fit for the Future

Over the past 15 years, the medical services have worked tirelessly to improve medical readiness. The medical readiness rates of the services have seen double-digit growth, as commanders work alongside healthcare providers to identify and eliminate potential barriers to deployability.

Today, AFMS is faced with the question of how to sustain the competency of our medical force into the coming years and decades.

AFMS is committed to preserving the medical skills obtained in the last 15 years and will continue to meet the evolving requirements of combatant commanders. By staying fit for the future, AFMS will be ready to provide trusted and reliable health services to our Airmen and their families for years to come.