Photo By Staff Sgt. Zoe Morris | West Virginia Army National Guard Spc. Amia Adkins adjusts a Soldier's hands before a...... read more read more
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In less than 24 months the West Virginia Army National Guard (WVARNG) has moved to number one in the nation for Soldier medical readiness from 26th overall by developing new strategies and techniques to improve processes and ensure overall readiness of the 4,500-member force.
A June, 2016 Department of the Army (DoA) mandate to decrease the percent of Soldiers with an undetermined Medical Readiness Category (MRC) motivated Deputy State Surgeon Maj. Tyler Vaughn and Guard leadership to make changes, ensuring all Soldiers have updated medical screenings and follow-through in cases of short and long-term medical and dental issues that may prevent a service member from deploying.
Two of the biggest advances were made by cross-training all members of the Medical Detachment on every station and opening up individual appointments mid-week and on drill weekends, said Master Sgt. Daniel Evans, fulltime MedDet non-commissioned officer (NCO) in charge.
“We basically doubled and tripled out staffing just by making everyone proficient at every job,” Evans said.
With support from Brig. Gen. Russell Crane, the WVARNG assistant adjutant general, the MedDet opened up around 4,500-5,000 individual mid-week and drill weekend PHA appointments in early 2016. This surge allowed many who were unavailable for unit PHAs to move from an unknown status to an acceptable status. Since then, there are approximately 2,500 mid-week and weekend PHA appointments to allow any Soldier to complete an assessment in a timely manner.
The MedDet team also created a easy-to-read form to be used during the PHA so that Soldiers and providers could quickly see where the service member was in the process. Also, blood taken for HIV screening began to be labeled with a scanable sticker instead of a hand-written label that could easily be smudged, reducing rejected samples at the lab. A simple fix, Evans said, but a rejected sample lead to that Soldier being required to come back to the MedDet on their own time for another sample.
The time required for the once-a-year PHA screening has been reduced from around three hours to approximately 45 minutes thanks to new approaches utilized by the medical team, according to Vaughn. Mass PHAs are also held at a unit’s home location, allowing units to fulfill regulatory requirements in less than a day of drill status. By cutting out travel and time requirements of a unit, Evan said, the WVARNG saves funding through travel pay usually afforded a unit that may have to go to Charleston and also frees up time in the training schedule which would have been dedicated to PHAs.
In 2016, the WVARNG had five percent of their members in an undetermined status and raised it to less than two percent in 2018.
“We ran a lean six sigma strategy, making the process quicker by eliminating unnecessary steps,” said Evans, who credits Vaughn’s support of the Med Det and SSO NCOs as a large part of why the team was able to reexamine practices, identify changes and then bata test the changes during individual appointments, leading to a large impact state-wide.
Vaughn said the WVARNG medical readiness outcomes have garnered attention for their best practices, and are continuing to move forward with the goal of keeping the WVARNG fit and ready.
| Date Taken: | 02.20.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 02.20.2018 10:42 |
| Story ID: | 266510 |
| Location: | CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 646 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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