While privatizing many medical and dental services jobs has allowed more people in uniform to contribute to the high pace of operations in the global war on terror, and could cost less at the same time, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says Congress could use more thorough information about its ramifications. The privatization process, which started in FY 2004, has resulted in transferal of more than 10,000 medical and dental jobs to civilian contractors before the program entered a moratorium period that began last Oct. 1 and will remain in effect until Sept. 30, 2012. But because the Defense Department is scheduled to grow considerably within the next two years, DoD health care and comptroller officials may have to reexamine privatization sooner than that, the GAO stated in a Feb. 8 report. The expansion "will continue to tax the military health system in several areas, including manpower management," the report stated. The Defense Department must carefully keep track of how expansion affects health care delivery to the military system’s nine million service members and dependents, and deliver that data to Congress in a timely fashion, in order to ensure that care delivery does not suffer and quality-of-life goals are met. To view the entire report, visit http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/pastweek.html.
