U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, delivered the following opening statement at a hearing on patient safety and the quality of care in the military health system.
Rep. Gallagher's remarks as prepared for delivery:
Thank you, Chairwoman Speier. I also want to thank our two panels of witnesses for being with us today. A special thank you to Mr. Dez Del Barba and Mr. Derrick Luckey for their willingness to share their personal stories.
Patient safety in the Military Health System (MHS) is a critically important topic when we think of direct support for our warfighters and our military families.
As a Marine serving in Iraq… I was a consumer of military health care. Whether that was the Corpsman or "Doc" serving our unit… or the health providers in the Division or at the Expeditionary Medical Facility… One thing was always certain, we needed to know without a doubt that there was someone to care for us and get us back to the line as quickly as possible.
I know from personal experience that it's not always as easy as going to see the "Doc". Health care and patient safety are complex issues because they often times deal with intricate processes that rely on multiple specialists, care teams and case managers.
In preparing for this hearing, I looked at some statistics from the National Institutes of Health that found approximately 400,000 hospitalized patients experience some type of preventable harm each year…; that medical errors cost approximately $20 billion a year…; and that medical errors in hospitals and clinics result in approximately 100,000 people dying each year.
Within the Department of Defense, a 2014 review found that, "while the Military Health System (MHS) delivers safe, timely, and quality care that is largely comparable to care delivered in the civilian sector, the MHS demonstrated wide performance variability with some areas better than civilian counterparts and other areas below national and DoD benchmarks."
I understand that reforms in the NDAA as well as internal process improvements are making a positive impact… but the bottom line is that the MHS is not yet where it needs to be.
One thing that can be done is to attack variation at every turn, whether it is in the operating room, in the clinic or on the battlefield. There are many examples within the military of high reliability organizations that focus on eliminating variation and planning until service-members can't get it wrong. These organizations empower meritocratic ideals that teach us that every person has an important role on the team based on their performance professional acumen.
Some examples include military aviation, nuclear propulsion and special warfare communities. I'd also like to add … although not the focus of today's hearing… that war gaming is another way to evolve our military culture into eliminating variation in a never-ending quest to defeat our adversaries.
For our hearing today… I'd like to understand the challenges the Military Health System has with embracing a high reliability organization culture and recommendations on how to get there.
