The Defense Health Agency Stands Up
Standing Up
Lt Gen Robb. When I come to work each day, I think about the progress we’ve made in the journey of this military health system transformation. When you look at it, this is probably the largest military health care transformation that has occurred in decades, if not ever.
Dr. Jonathan Woods is an incredible leader, number one; but number two, he has a strategic vision and a strategic ability to make things happen. And he has a great deputy in Dr. Karen Guice. Both are incredible leaders at the right place, at the right time, coupled with congressional support. And then through the task force and the services, getting the Joint Staff and the services support as we move forward.
On 1 October 2013 we stood up and we created an organizational construct…. Those 10 shared services are embedded in an organizational construct that has 6 directorates. One is health care operations, number 2 is health information technology, number 3 is research and development, number 4 is education and training, number 5 is business support, and then, number 6 through a process that evolved [into] … the Multiservice Market National Capital Region Directorate.
Let’s look at the commitment not only by the OSD, but also from the services. So you’ve got 6 directorates and each of those directorates are led by a general officer, an admiral, or a senior executive service official…. There were no new general offices allotted to the Defense Health Agency. So those general offices came from the services. It [was] with the men and women who were part of the Army, Navy, and Air Force medicine who are now part of the Defense Health Agency.
What we’ve done in these 2 years is we’ve molded and we’ve melded and we’ve grown those teams to support those directorates and then the divisions within those directorates and the staff to support the shared services inside our organizational construct.
Joint Platforms
Lt Gen Robb. We’ve matured and there are in each of those directorates, in each of those shared services, success stories It’s one thing to stand something up. But we often say, “We were building the airplane as we flew it.” And we were producing, again, what I call, at times long overdue, joint products in support of the services.…
I’m excited about standing up again a joint platform that allows the military health system to accelerate business and operational elements to make a more effective and efficient military health system. But probably just as important, if not more important, it allows us to be a lot more agile and responsive to the challenges that come our way.
One of the positive spinoffs that I’ve had the privilege to experience is that when we stood up the Defense Health Agency, it then became a member of a group of organizations that in many ways work together.… The Defense Health Agency, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) exist solely to provide capability and joint capability where it makes sense to the services, and they are enablers.
The Defense Health Agency is also a designated combat support agency, which means not only are we answerable to the service surgeons general and to the service chiefs, but we are also directly responsible to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide combat support capability for our commanders.…
We are supporting and we will be responsive to the needs of the services. We will look for opportunity. We will continue to mature. We will continue to progress in our organizational construct. But at the same time… we have set up a senior level group from the services led by a general officer who will look at making sure that we are delivering on our initial 10 shared services and that we are continuing to meet what we said we were going to do. And then also for them to feed back to us where is there opportunity, where are there needs, but also that group is out there to look at where are there future opportunities.
Is there another shared service out there, or is there another shared joint first solution opportunity out there that we need to put into the queue to address to make us better, stronger, more relevant in the 21st century but at the same time, viable and in a very fiscally constrained environment?
Quality, Safety, and Access for Patients
Lt Gen Robb. The world doesn’t stop just because you’re building an organization.... Now that we’ve got this joint platform, we can aggregate the patient safety and the quality data that we have out there and look at where there is opportunity for the military health system to improve. We have bought an enterprise-wide analytic capability that will support the services as we continue to drive toward a high reliability organization, number one, and to continuously improve both quality, safety, and access. Much like DLA is to the logistics world and DISA is to the information systems world, we’re a centralized organizational construct that can bring the services together to create, what I call, an interoperable or joint force solution where it makes sense.
