HAMPTON, Va. — The Military Health System is seeing a change soon all over the country, including the Hampton Roads area.
"We're trying to integrate our healthcare system across Army Medicine, Navy Medicine, and Air Force Medicine," said Vice Admiral Raquel Bono.
Vice Admiral Bono is also the Director of the Defense Health Agency, and she said bringing the control of all three medicine branches under the DHA ensures a more consistent and transparent patient care experience.
"What we're trying to do is optimize the level of care with our existing resources," she said.
Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, the McDonald Army Health Center and the U.S. Air Force Hospital Langley at Joint Base Langley-Eustis would all operate under the DHA.
Vice Admiral Bono said the different troops are deployed together in the battlefield, and they work well as one so this is a chance to apply that at home.
"Part of that is when we work together across Army, Air Force, and Navy, we're sharing all of the lessons, and we're elevating our performance collectively," she said.
She assured that patients will notice that there's more consistency.
"How they make an appointment here at Langley will be the exact same way they make an appointment in San Diego or the same exact same way they'd make an appointment in Hawaii. So, for them, the experience of care should start getting more standardized," she said.
The transformation starts on October 1, 2019.