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Reservists' Medical Support Now Accounted for, Quantified

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS090812-23
Release Date: 8/12/2009 4:14:00 PM

By Sarah Fortney, National Naval Medical Center Public Affairs

BETHESDA, Md. (NNS) -- In January, Navy Medicine National Capital Area (NMNCA)officials began working on the Reserve Metrics Project, a system that will help track the monetary value of Reservists' services. The system is expected go live Oct. 1 and will track services over the course of a full fiscal year.

A team of Navy Reservists and business analysts developed the system, which involves assigning a quantifiable code to each type of medical care the Reservists provide. Pricing is then matched based on these codes.

"We take those [codes] and decide how much would be reimbursed," said Rear Adm. Cindy Dullea, deputy commander of Navy Medicine National Capital Area and deputy director of Navy Nurse Corps. "Our main goal is to truly understand the value of medical care that the reserve component of Navy Medicine provides … What would it cost us to go out and provide this care?"

Navy Reservists provide a wide variety of services, including care for active duty medical clinics and hospitals. They also keep all Navy Reservists medically ready for mobilization, providing periodic health assessments for all Navy members.

In addition, the Reservists serve impoverished countries on humanitarian missions.

The new metrics project will allow Navy Medicine to truly quantify all of these services.

Navy Medicine recently used a 17-day humanitarian mission as a pilot test for the system, coding the types of care Navy Reservists provided. In all, they determined more than $1.4 million worth of care had been administered.

Not only will the system help benchmark care among other hospitals, it will also justify Reservists' work.
It's important to know the value and investment of the services being offered. With this new system, the region can account for the care they are providing and, in turn, be reimbursed for productivity.

This month, the NMNCA will distribute a user's guide for the system, and there will be a dry run for collecting data and activity at the end of August until September.

"In the fiscal world we live in, I believe this gives us tools in our tool kit to be able to speak to the value that the Reserve component of Navy Medicine can bring to the table," Dullea said.

For more news from National Naval Medical Center, visit www.navy.mil/local/nnmc/.