STATEMENT OF REAR ADMIRAL TERRY J. MOULTON, MSC, USN
DEPUTY SURGEON GENERAL OF THE NAVY BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

Force Health Protection is the bedrock of Navy Medicine. It is what we do and why we exist. It is our duty – our obligation and our privilege – to promote, protect and restore the health of our Sailors and Marines. This mission spans the full spectrum of health care, from optimizing the health and fitness of the force, to maintaining robust disease surveillance and prevention programs, to saving lives on the battlefield. When Marines and Sailors go into harm’s way, Navy Medicine is with them. On any given day, Navy Medicine is underway and forward deployed with the Fleet and Marine Forces, around the globe.

Medical Readiness Requirements and Reporting

Our personnel are critical to delivering rapidly deployable, fully integrated, operational support to the Combatant Command (CCMD); both organic and surge forces. The organic forces include personnel assigned to an operational commander and routinely deployed as part of operations, exercises, and theatre engagements. Our surge forces are designated for the augmentation stage and are ready and capable of deploying in support of contingency and sustained combat operations.

The modeling and projections for our uniformed providers are derived from their Operational Plans (OPLANS) coupled with our Medical Manpower All Corps Requirements Estimator (MedMACRE). The OPLANS outline the capabilities required to prosecute various wartime scenarios based on the Secretary of Defense’s Defense Planning Guidance. There are three major tenets to the strategy for quantifying Navy medical manpower requirements:
(1) operational medicine, (2) developing medical capability, and (3) honing and sustaining medical capability.

- Operational medicine includes non-BSO 18 (outside of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED)) billets such as the Fleet and Fleet Marine Force billets, individual augmentation requirements generated by Joint or Combatant Commanders to support functions and operations beyond the purview of the Department of the Navy (DON). In addition, it includes surge forces deployed in support of the Defense Department’s Steady State Security Posture (SSSP).
- Developing medical capability is based on calculating the requirement to recruit and train personnel to support the operational mission. The size and shape of this structure is driven by requirements and guidance provided by medical certification boards, education accreditation committees, and other organizations external to the Department of Department (DoD).
- Honing and sustaining is to ensure the professional qualification and proficiency of medical personnel. These are required to support day-to-day operational commitments and major contingencies and drive the requirement for staffing the Navy’s military treatment facilities (MTFs), as well as provide the rotation base generated to support operational requirements.
In order to ensure that Navy Medicine's readiness reporting systems provide both individual and platform data that are aligned to best support Service-level and DoD requirements, Navy Medicine utilizes the Expeditionary Medicine Platform Augmentation, Readiness, and Training System (EMPARTS); Navy Medicine's official readiness tracking and reporting system for sourcing platforms. EMPARTS is a web-based automated information management system that monitors and reports readiness of personnel designated to support Navy Expeditionary Health Service Support (NEHSS) platforms in support of contingency operations and humanitarian missions. EMPARTS provides Medical Department member status to individual unit commanders and higher headquarters, tracks medical conditions, legal documents and administrative requirements, monitor unit readiness, tracks individual deployment and other unique information (i.e., administrative, personnel training and overall).