Care Coordination for Active Duty Soldiers on Profile

Health care treatment for soldiers is fraught with problems. Soldiers express concern about barriers to diagnosis and treatment for injuries. They believe they are not getting optimal post injury care. These barriers to access result in incomplete recovery and a delay in return to duty (Jennings & Loan, 2001). Therefore, process changes and an intervention were designed to facilitate injury recovery and soldier medical profile management. The magnitude of these alterations, however, requires pilot work to guide the development of the infrastructure needed to support examining the intervention (Prescott & Soeken, 1999).

This study will create an infrastructure for improving the care coordination for active duty soldiers by: 1) implementing a process and database to track injured soldiers through the health care system, 2) standardizing practice guidelines to treat soldier musculoskeletal injuries (the most common injured among soldiers), 3) solidifying instruments for use with injured soldiers to test the intervention, and 4) pilot testing an intervention using a nurse care coordinator to facilitate solders' moving through the care process. These efforts will provide the foundation for a follow on study to test the ability of nurse care coordination to decrease soldier time on profile and improve soldier, unit, and Army outcomes.

The specific aims of this study are to: 1) develop and implement a process to monitor the medical profiles of soldiers at Fort Lewis, 2) inform/educate providers regarding use of the profile tracking database, 3) develop and populate a database to track medical profiles from all Fort Lewis care portals, 4) develop and implement standardized care and practice guidelines for musculoskeletal injuries to be used at appropriate Fort Lewis care portals, 5) using data from the medical profile database, describe profiles for injured soldiers at Fort Lewis, 6) solidify and pilot test the instrument package that will be used in the follow on intervention study, and 7) pilot test a nurse care coordinating intervention for soldiers with injury profiles. Findings from this study have the potential to set the stage for improving care for active duty soldiers and ensuring they are medically ready to deploy.

Final report is available on NTRL: https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB2013104...