Our second priority is to bring reform to IHS. This priority has two parts — the first part includes how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will help us reform IHS. American Indians and Alaska Natives can benefit from the ACA in many ways, whether t...

Our third priority is to improve the quality of and access to care. IHS is focusing on improvements in customer service through implementation of activities for our staff, such as customer service training, education, feedback and awards for no...

PHS pharmacists assigned to the U.S. Coast Guard have been progressive in enhancing pharmacist-delivered patient-care services. Coast Guard Pharmacy serves approximately 43,000 active duty Coast Guard members and 8,000 reservists. PHS pharmacis...

PHS pharmacists will continue to engage in many pharmacy-related initiatives within the Department of Health and Human Services and with external customers. In 2012, the Million Hearts campaign was launched for a concerted national effort to ta...

As the integration of PACT in VA has progressed, recognition has increased that, in order to complete the medical home concept, strong links to specialty care were needed. Recognition that the CPS has a long history of being imbedded in special...

We assessed the services provided by our pharmacists by conducting a field survey of pharmacists assigned to PACT in 2010. We identified a high demand to provide clinical pharmacy practice refresher courses. In response to that demand, we devel...

All pain-management programs noted thus far directly support the Interdisciplinary Pain Management Centers (IPMC) being established at major Army medical centers throughout the DoD. The Navy is building similar centers termed R4s (Readiness, Re...

Both the DoD and VHA are actively adopting the Extensions for Community Health Outcomes (ECHO) telemedicine initiative developed at The University of New Mexico under the direction of Sanjeev Arora, MD. Unlike more-traditional applications of t...

The most commonly used pain-rating scale in the military is the standard, 0-10, numeric rating scale (NRS). This scale is easily administered, well-known throughout the military care community and has been extensively validated as a clinical re...