Summary

The military services medical departments have missions to: (1) provide peacetime care to eligible beneficiaries; and (2) maintain readiness to meet wartime contingencies. Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the extent to which wartime military medical personnel shortages exist, what is being done or can be done to overcome the shortages, and how well available personnel are trained for wartime missions.

An analysis of Department of Defense (DOD) data shows that the number and types of medical personnel in the active duty and reserve forces fall far short of the total projected personnel requirements for the current, most demanding wartime scenarios. DOD projections show that shortages of physicians, nurses, and enlisted medical personnel would be most severe, reduce capacity to deliver wartime care, and begin to occur soon after mobilization. Shortages of surgical personnel would be especially critical. Some other enlisted specialty shortages would also be critical because no pretrained pool exists in the civilian sector. To plan effectively for wartime contingencies, DOD planners need data not only on total medical personnel requirements, but also on what portion of those requirements DOD can actually use in its own military hospitals. It has made little progress toward implementing plans and initiatives to increase its capabilities in these personnel shortage areas. DOD medical readiness planning has focused on long-range goals and objectives to address anticipated changes in threat, personnel, and other factors in future years. Federal mobilization planners believe that the civilian sector has enough medical personnel to augment most military mobilization needs. Selective Service System (SSS) planners have not determined the rate at which medical personnel could be brought into the military if mobilization occurred. Other alternatives are available to DOD in planning to overcome shortages of medical personnel after mobilization.