Purple Medicine: The Case for a Joint Medical Command
Abstract
In response to a broad set of complex national security challenges of the twenty-first century, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) report of February 2006 advised that all the organizations, processes, and practices within the Department of Defense be given a high degree of agility, flexibility, responsiveness, and ultimately effectiveness in supporting the joint war fighter and future national defense goals. In that connection, the 2006 QDR recommends that medical support be likewise aligned with emerging joint force employment concepts. Indeed, the Department of Defense, in conjunction with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already been directed to develop an implementation plan for such a unified structure, the Joint Medical Command. An antecedent clause in the Department of Defense Program Budget Decision 753 of 23 December 2004 laid the conceptual groundwork. It directed that a plan for a Joint Medical Command be accomplished by the fiscal year 2008?2013 Program/ Budget Review. How can this intention be best brought to fruition? The organizational structure of the present military. The organizational structure of the present military hospital system predates World War II,when each service provided for all of its own health care. In the sixty years since the conclusion of that conflict, there have been numerous proposals for a unified medical command structure. Largely due to cost-containment pressure exercised by the executive branch, Congress,sand the services themselves, some cooperation has evolved in the delivery of peacetime health care to eligible Department of Defense beneficiaries in a framework known as the Military Health System (MHS). During this time no less than fifteen federally sponsored studies and numerous scholarly reports have examined the MHS, and the overwhelming majority has proposed the creation of a unified medical command.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA519521
Entities
People
- Arthur M. Smith
- David A. Lane
- James A. Zimble
Organizations
- Naval War College