Why GAO Did This Study
DOD’s health care system prepares medical personnel for wartime or humanitarian missions while providing health care to servicemembers and other eligible beneficiaries. It is responsible for ensuring that military servicemembers are physically and mentally fit to perform their missions and that it has an adequate number of medical personnel with the requisite skills and training to meet DOD’s mission needs (operational medical force readiness). DOD uses GME programs to recruit and retain military physicians by providing specialized medical training through physician residencies and fellowships in exchange for active duty service obligations…
What GAO Found
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (NDAA 2017) directed the Secretary of Defense to establish and implement a process to oversee military graduate medical education (GME). The goal was to ensure GME programs fully supported operational medical force readiness, and the NDAA 2017 included several requirements for the process. In July 2018, the Department of Defense (DOD) provided a report to Congress outlining its proposed GME oversight process, and GAO found that the proposed process addressed each of the NDAA 2017 requirements. (See table.) The process formalized practices that were already in place within the military services, while also establishing two new oversight entities—the Oversight Advisory Council and the Integration Advisory Board. These entities were chartered in late 2018 and report to the director of DOD’s Defense Health Agency.
Read the full 19-page report here.
Source: DOD’s Proposed Plan for Oversight of Graduate Medical Education Programs – March 28, 2019. GAO.gov.
