No Way?? Really?? Did Someone Pull their head out?

All I can say is “NO-DUH?” This is what happens when you get “YES MEN” at the top. I swear to god, the folks at the top of Navy Medicine have to stand in the shoes of HM1 Dustmans on his “4th” count it “4th” deployment to IRAQ. 4.. And some Doc’s and Medic’s have been more.

This is just fricken NUTS!! I don’t understand how officers and Senior Enlisted lost how it was to be a junior person. This is the problem with Navy Medicine Rank Structure. They don’t FRICKEN LISTEN!! I know I have sat at Master Chief Calls, Force Master Chief Calls, and we talked to them about multiple deployments etc.. how hard it is on them and their families.. Their offer? Go to a teaching position, or Go to a overseas Hospital.

Problem with that.. A E-4 Cannot teach at Corps School, So what is he/she going to teach?

Underwater Basket weaving?

Or how about getting deployed to a hospital or if your lucky to one of our Billets at NHCS as instructor or non instructor.. then your sent off immediately to IRAQ or AFGHANISTAN as a IA.. I know several Doc’s on this site that this has happened to, and when they got back it was time for SEA again with the Marines.. Guess what?

Time to deploy again..

All the while the butt snorkelers are up in DC making decisions like this and going home every night after golf, a night out for drinks etc.. And don’t, don’t even tell me “OFFICERS” have it bad in Country. They don’t go “IN COUNTRY”.. but that is for “ANOTHER RANT..

Thousands of medical billets will stay Navy

By Chris Amos – Staff writer
Posted : Sunday May 4, 2008 11:36:00 EDT

Congress has ordered the Navy to abandon its plan to replace thousands of uniformed medical personnel with civilian federal government employees.

The service had intended to replace about 7,700 uniformed physicians, dentists, nurses and hospital corpsmen with government civil service workers and contractors between 2005 and 2013.

The conversions would have amounted to 28 percent of the Navy’s uniformed dentist billets; 18 percent of HM billets; 14 percent of uniformed Medical Service Corps billets, which include specialists such as occupational therapists and pharmacists; 6 percent of uniformed physician billets; and 4 percent of uniformed nursing billets.

The roughly 2,700 military billets that have been converted to civilian billets since 2005 will not be affected, said Cmdr. Tim Weber, director of manpower resources for Navy Surgeon General Vice Adm. Adam Robinson. That means 152 physician, 191 dentist, 99 nurse, 213 support officer and 2,011 corpsman billets will remain filled by civilians.

The Navy will continue to convert a limited number of unfilled positions that were ordered converted in fiscal 2005, 2006 and 2007, and plans for the 700 billets scheduled to be converted in fiscal 2013 remain up in the air because Congress’ order expires at the end of fiscal 2012.

The Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery will scrap the 4,200 conversions scheduled from fiscal 2009 through fiscal 2012. Weber could not provide a breakdown of what specialties would be spared or which hospitals would have lost billets under the plan, but said as many as 75 percent of the conversions would have involved corpsmen positions.

The prohibition on further conversions, passed in January as part of the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, might not last. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved its version of the 2009 defense authorization bill May 1 and included language that would repeal the prohibition on converting positions and allow the hiring of civilians if the services certify the conversions would not affect the cost or quality of, or access to, care.

House committee members say the apparent confusion comes from disagreements as to the future makeup of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. They say top Navy officials want to hire civilians because of difficulties recruiting military medical personnel. The Health Sciences Scholarship Program, which provides as many as 75 percent of Navy physicians and dentists, has fallen short of its recruiting goals for five straight years and could lead to a shortfall of more than 10 percent of the Navy’s 3,700 physicians by 2013.

But they say some lawmakers are reluctant to convert billets because of complaints that service at Navy hospitals could suffer if enough civilians cannot be hired, especially in rural areas such as Jacksonville, N.C., and Parris Island, S.C., where even civilian hospitals have trouble filling positions.

“We have challenges in personnel,” former Navy Surgeon General Vice Adm. Donald Arthur told the House Armed Services Committee last year. “We have a program … that has asked us to make military-to-civilian conversions. We are only able to make about 83 percent of those conversions at the moment, despite an intense effort to do so.”
Bureau ‘doesn’t get it’

Navy officials said the plan would allow them to focus uniformed medical personnel on supporting deployed units while dedicating some billets at Navy hospitals to civilian workers, who could improve continuity of care. But many junior military doctors opposed the plan.

One Navy surgeon said last year that conversions would have worsened retention problems. “The question is whether deploying personnel will have any place to return to and provide medical care to active duty, retirees and dependents as they have been trained to do,” said the surgeon, who asked to not be identified. “Most physicians don’t want to just go to Afghanistan. Most of us want a range of assignments. In the past, we have always exchanged quality of life [at hospitals in the continental U.S.] for the stresses of deployment medicine.

Arthur’s testimony stressed the heavy tolls of high op tempo, as well.

“We also addressed fatigue of our deployers,” Arthur said. “We have a great number of our corpsmen, doctors, nurses, dentists who are deploying, and not just once or twice, but three, four times. And this operational tempo for a very combat trauma-resuscitative, intensive war does cause fatigue in our providers.”

“The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery doesn’t get it,” a second Navy physician said last month. “You have to have civilians who will take these positions or qualified civilians in the area of some of these military treatment facilities. They’re not there. Not to mention service people wanting families and constantly being deployed.

“Better warm up Rangel’s draft plans — they’re going to need them,” he added, referring to calls over the years by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., to return to a draft.

Weber said patients will see no difference in care because Navy medicine will continue to operate as it has been. He declined to comment on the benefits or risks of scrapping the plans, but acknowledged that the Navy retains operational flexibility by keeping health care providers in uniform.

The divide between civilian and active-duty hospital staff also could create morale problems — an issue Arthur raised when he testified before the House Armed Services Committee in 2007 about work conditions at National Naval Medical Center Bethesda, Md.

“I was told of the problem with overtime pay given to the civilians that we’ve had on conversion,” Arthur said. “There are no nights, no weekends, 40 hours a week, no deployment. And they take the place of and sit right beside a lesser paid active-duty member who is doing the same job.”