The Defense Department‘s healthcare management officials have informed the Senate Armed Services Committee of their efforts to improve medical services delivery to active-duty military personnel and their families, DoD News reported Wednesday.
Terri Moon Cronk writes Jonathan Woodson, assistant defense secretary for health affairs, told SASC members during a Tuesday hearing that DoD has adopted strategies to increase primary and specialty care access for Military Health System and Tricare beneficiaries.
“We entered 2016 confident the reforms in the Military Health System and Tricare can be further strengthened through a combination of legislative and operational reforms,” he noted to the committee.
Woodson added the survival rate of wounded soldiers in the battlefield has increased by more than 95 percent due to medical collaboration among military services branches.
Vice Adm. Raquel Bono, director of the Defense Health Agency, told senators during the meeting that DHA works to simplify its contracts in an effort to better manage care and safety of military personnel.
DHA also formed an analytics team to “assess performance of MHS using joint measures for readiness, health, quality, safety, satisfaction and cost for leadership at the headquarters and field level,” Bono added, the publication reports.