Air Force wastes millions on health care - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Air Force wastes millions on health care

The Air Force has wasted millions of dollars by paying for airmen to visit private doctors while appointments at military treatment facilities went unfilled, an Air Force Audit Agency report found.

The Air Force could save at least $21 million during the next six years by fixing its appointment scheduling practices, according to the audit of medical facilities at 12 bases. The savings would be considerably larger if scheduling practices were improved Air Force-wide, the report said.

During a three-month period, more than 19,000 patients were referred to the private sector, while nearly 14,000 appointments at military facilities went unfilled, according to the report.

The auditors also found that aerospace medicine clinics — responsible for taking care of aircrew members — operated below capacity because appointments went unfilled and eligible dependents often visited the base’s regular medical facilities rather than the aerospace facilities.

The Air Force could save additional money if more appointments were available for online self-scheduling and administrators were better trained on the Web-based appointment scheduling system, the audit found.

The Air Force Surgeon General’s Office was unable to comment on the report by press time, but officials there concurred with the report’s findings and said they are taking steps to improve the appointment process. The office is producing new instructions to encourage bases to make better use of their medical capacity, requiring medical commanders to monitor unused appointments and developing better tracking tools.

The report was released in May and obtained by Air Force Times under the Freedom of Information Act.

The audit, conducted January through March 2008, found that 11 of the 12 bases unnecessarily referred patients to private health care providers, wasting government money.

The referrals are allowed under the Tricare health program, in which military members and their dependents can go to private health care providers if military bases are unable to provide the necessary services. The Air Force picks up the bill for these services, which amounted to an $82 million expense in fiscal 2007, according to the report.

At the base facilities that were audited, however, the percentage of available appointments that went unfilled ranged from 11.9 percent at the Langley Air Force Base, Va., internal medicine clinic to 39.4 percent at the Whiteman Air Force Base., Mo., physical therapy clinic.

The report identified a couple of causes of the problem.

Before referring patients to private providers, Air Force medical personnel should try to cross-book patients into other on-base clinics with available appointments. For example, the report said, a child who can’t get an appointment at the pediatric clinic can be scheduled at a family practice clinic rather than referring the child to a private provider.

But the audit found bases often referred patients to private providers rather than cross-booking, leading to unfilled appointment slots at military facilities.

Bases also failed to make available appointments that had been -reserved for follow-ups but were never actually scheduled.

For example, doctors might pre-reserve an emergency room patient’s follow-up visit, but many patients don’t schedule the actual appointment. Many bases failed to release these unused appointments, which would make them available to other patients.

At Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., for example, 418 of 1,067 pre-reserved appointments — 39 percent — were not released and ultimately went unfilled, the audit found.

Cross-booking and unfreezing appointments could account for $13.1 million of the $21 million in potential savings, according to the report.

Making better use of aerospace medicine services for eligible dependents would save $7.8 million, and the service could save an additional $550,000 annually by making better use of online appointment scheduling.

The 12 bases audited were Langley; Whiteman; Offutt; Davis-Monthan, Ariz.; Luke, Ariz.; Keesler, Miss.; Little Rock, Ark.; Robins, Ga.; Wright-Patterson, Ohio; Malmstrom, Mont.; Elmendorf, Alaska; and Ramstein, Germany.