Military medicine’s mission is to prepare trained medical teams who can reach wounded troops fast, stay sharp between wars, and deliver high-quality health care on and off the battlefield, according to Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness Anthony J. Tata.

“The primary purpose of our Military Health System is to have trained and ready medical personnel for combat operations,” he said. “It’s also to take care of our beneficiaries.”

Speaking March 4 to leaders and experts from the MHS, other federal health agencies, and allied nations at an annual federal health professionals meeting, Tata said the MHS exists to support combat operations. To meet this mission, Tata said the Department of War must keep clinicians sharp during peacetime — and the MHS must do this with urgency — as Tata learned while serving in combat operations.

“For every combat operation that I led as a commander, I would always get my medics together prior to crossing that line of departure, and I would say that our trigger-pullers can go do what they’re going to go do because they know you’re going to get to them and take care of them in that golden hour,” Tata said.
Tata retired in 2009 as a U.S. Army brigadier general after 28 years of service. His last combat deployment was 2006-2007 as deputy commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division and Joint Task Force 76 in Afghanistan.

Maintaining medical skills is a readiness imperative

Tata described a readiness problem known as the “Walker Dip,” referring to interwar periods that may diminish medical readiness.

“What happens is that our surgeons, our medics, and our nurses aren’t seeing the reps and sets … the combat casualties, the complex wounds that come through during combat time, and medical readiness drops,” he said. “How do we increase it?”

The answer, Tata said, is not theoretical. It lies in more patients, more procedures, and more real-world practice — and that means partnerships. He urged deeper partnerships with the Department of Veterans Affairs and civilian hospitals to expedite care for service members and veterans.

Partnerships like the one the DOW maintains with the VA increase clinical volume and sustain skills, Tata emphasized.

“We’ve really been working hard to partner with the VA and with civilian hospitals,” Tata said, noting the department has already seen results. “We’re coming out of that Walker Dip because of these partnerships. There have been hundreds of appointments that our doctors have seen and thousands of surgeries and other types of medical care that have been provided by our active duty, reserve, and National Guard medical personnel. Partnerships are now part of how we’re doing business.”

He also described new and expanding arrangements with civilian systems, pointing to existing relationships with private health care companies.

In Tata’s view, these relationships do two jobs at once. They help military teams keep the skills they need for high-end war and strengthen federal health care by linking systems that too often operate in separate lanes.

Tata also connected these efforts to a broader view of federal health care that spans the full arc of a military career, including a smoother transition of care between the DOW and the VA. He said too many service members leave without completing the paperwork needed to access benefits, and delays can block the processing of records after separation.

“One of the things that we’re super focused on is the electronic health record,” Tata said. He noted that only about 25% of separating service members use the benefits-on-discharge program, which leaves roughly 75% needing timely medical records for VA determinations.

Tata described a goal he called “day zero”: “If I’m active duty today and tonight, at midnight, I’m retired, then there should be zero days between when I can log on somewhere and pull down my medical records.”

He urged those dedicated to ensuring high-quality warfighter care to “move the chains down the field and get better every day so that we can serve the men and women in uniform, their families, and our department civilians.”