Improving U.S. Military Accession Medical Screening Systems

About this book

Responsibility for medically screening enlisted and officer applicants for the armed forces falls on two Department of Defense (DoD) organizations: the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command (USMEPCOM), which screens mainly enlisted applicants at military entrance processing stations (MEPS) throughout the country; and the Department of Defense Medical Examination Review Board (DoDMERB), which contracts with civilian health care providers to screen officer applicants. Given the inconsistencies and inefficiencies of the two systems, the project team was tasked with exploring how best to reform the medical screening process. After conducting interviews, focus groups, and a workshop with key stakeholders; reviewing documentation on current policies and practices; and examining prior DoD efforts at improvement, the team developed three main courses of action (COAs) to reform the business models used for accession medical screening, considered the potential feasibility of implementing each COA, and identified the COA for a hybrid model of the two systems as presenting the least amount of risk while allowing for simultaneous testing of enlisted and officer applicants across the two sy…