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MHS leadership November message

  • Published
WASHINGTON --  Military Health System Team -

As we mentioned in our inaugural joint message last month, we are working to organize and lead the Military Health System (MHS) into the future by building a stronger, even more unified team. As we continue in these efforts, we are also committed to transparency, and to sharing our decisions. Recently, our team has made significant progress in outlining the MHS of the future with the creation of enhanced Multi-Service Markets (eMSM). Promoting health for over 9.7 million beneficiaries in the MHS is a shared responsibility among the Military Services, purchased care providers, and beneficiaries that requires team collaboration to successfully achieve medically ready forces, healthy beneficiaries, and a high quality, cost-effective System For Health. eMSMs are a centerpiece of this cooperative and accountable approach, focused on the beneficiary across geographically overlapping markets rather than individual MTFs. By uniting common clinical and business practices across the market, we will not only improve effectiveness, value and efficient care, but also advance the health of all our beneficiaries. We are continuing our implementation planning in this area. These efforts aim to provide value to the MHS while continuing to provide the best care possible, and will support one of the foundations of our System For Health - Primary Care.

Also, in our message last month, we promised to keep you informed of the major initiatives driving transformation from a healthcare system to a System For Health. In 2008, MHS leadership identified the Patient Centered Medical Home model for primary care as a key enabler of the Quadruple Aim. By redesigning health care delivery around the patient, starting with a multi-disciplinary team that includes the patient, primary care truly becomes the foundation of health and readiness, and drives the strategic outcomes defined in the Quadruple Aim: ensuring a medically ready force, delivering a consistently competitive care experience, reducing the causes of disease and illness through focus on prevention and encouragement of healthy behaviors, and creating value through improved health outcomes and elimination of waste and inefficiency in the care delivery process.

Each of the three services is well along in the process of transforming their Primary Care clinics (430+ sites) to Patient Centered Medical Homes. This transformation is complex and far-reaching with fundamental changes in how Primary Care work is designed and implemented, how care teams are organized and trained, and how Primary Care is integrated with the broader health care system to ensure delivery of safe, effective, comprehensive, and coordinated care.

Those changes are bearing fruit. Across the services, mature Patient Centered Medical Homes have shown significant improvements in patient satisfaction, PCM continuity, and access to care. Practice managers are teaming with clinical staff and hospital administrators to expand the definition of access from the traditional face-to-face PCM visit to include group visits, virtual care through Tri-Service adoption of secure messaging, and direct links to clinical pharmacists, dieticians, and other members of the expanded Primary Care delivery team.

Our investment in informatics to support the Patient Centered Medical Home goes beyond secure messaging to include evidence-based decision support tools to support business and clinical decision-making, telehealth capabilities, patient facing web portals, and systems for care coordination and tracking.

Perhaps most powerfully, the Patient Centered Medical Home has provided a foundation from which to engage our beneficiaries in the Life Space. A patient-centered culture enabled by patient-facing technology will allow us to more effectively tackle those fundamental drivers of health in the Life Space: activity, nutrition, and sleep.

Challenges remain. Each service is investing in communication tools and sustainment training to ensure that Patient Centered care is a culture, not a campaign. Leaders at all levels are engaged in building accountable care organizations that ensure smooth, safe transitions between inpatient and emergency room settings, primary care, the subspecialist offices, home, and work. We will continue the collective work of optimizing policies and processes across the MHS to advance our transformation to a System For Health.

Finally, from all of us in Washington, DC at the Military Health System headquarters, we wish you and your families a happy and safe Thanksgiving weekend.


Sincerely,



Jonathan Woodson, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs
LTG Patricia Horoho, Surgeon General, United States Army
VADM Mathew Nathan, Surgeon General, United States Navy
Lt. Gen. Thomas Travis, Surgeon General, United States Air Force