No revolutionary naval vessels, fighter planes, or weapon systems were involved. Rather, this one was about staffing military healthcare facilities. Make no mistake, though: It’s also revolutionary.
By Tricia Brown
August 27, 2024
For the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), it was just another contract with big numbers — in this case, $43 billion over 15 years. No revolutionary naval vessels, fighter planes, or weapon systems were involved. Rather, this one was about staffing military healthcare facilities. Make no mistake, though: It’s also revolutionary.
In May 2024, the Defense Health Agency (DHA) awarded 11 healthcare medical staffing agencies to recruit healthcare professionals and administrative healthcare workers under the Medical Q-Coded Support and Services-Next Generation (MQS2-NG) contract. This contract includes staffing for healthcare positions at 591 military hospitals and clinics nationwide and in Puerto Rico, Guam, and U.S. possessions. Those hospitals and clinics employ or contract with more than 100,000 providers and support staff who serve more than 9.6 million active-duty personnel, military retirees, and their families. MQS2-NG came to be because it’s gotten harder and harder to fill those 100,000-plus healthcare related positions.
There are several reasons why the government spent a significant amount of time to issue this new $43 billion healthcare staffing contract. The current U.S. shortfall of physicians could reach 86,000 by 2036, with sizable staffing gaps in nursing, behavioral health, and social work also predicted to continue in the years ahead. Demographics aren’t helping: The care-intensive over-75 population will grow by more than half by 2036 even as an estimated one-third of physicians retire within the next decade (42% of them are 55 or older today).
DoD adapts to a changing healthcare-staffing landscape
Working in military healthcare has its benefits. The patient ratios are lower, there’s no dealing with various insurers or spending time and energy on prior authorizations, and the hours make for a great work-life balance. You’re also serving the higher cause of your country in a tangible way. But aspects of the military healthcare system have added to the challenge of staying fully staffed. Many bases and facilities are in remote locations, the hiring process can be drawn-out, and the credentialing and security-clearing processes can represent additional hurdles. Past contracting approaches made it difficult to adjust to an increasingly competitive market for medical health professionals.
To the Defense Health Agency’s credit, it recognized a need to adapt a decade ago. That led to the original $7.5 billion MQS contract issued in late 2016. It could be regarded as a moderate success. It brought private-sector expertise into the military staffing sphere, which was received very positively. However, once Covid-19 struck, it became very difficult to source, recruit in, and retain healthcare candidates at pay rates established three years earlier under the MQS contract. That, plus spiking demand across healthcare, led to a fill rate of just 71%.
Along came MQS2-NG. What’s revolutionary about it? DoD’s openness to new approaches to recruiting and staffing solutions, its embrace of data to find qualified healthcare professionals, and its flexibility in doing what it takes to bring in the staff it needs to provide top-notch healthcare. Central to all that is relying on those 11 government and private-sector healthcare staffing companies to bring in thousands of contract healthcare professionals. These firms offer several advantages over the Defense Health Agency doing all its recruiting in-house.
What healthcare staffing experts bring to military healthcare
First, it’s all they do, so they’re laser-focused on it, and they don’t have to fend off competing priorities that might siphon off personnel or budget elsewhere.
Second, they can provide deep insights into the state of the healthcare labor market. They know where the healthcare deserts are (places lacking a health care system within a 150-mile radius) and what it takes to attract qualified staff to them. They’ve done analyses involving more than 300 specialties by regions and networks.
Their definition of “regions or networks” is fine-grained. It’s obvious enough that bringing in, say, a certified registered nurse anesthetist will require different incentives and pay packages at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi then it will at Camp Pendleton near San Diego. But hiring at Camp Pendleton isn’t straightforward, either. That part of Southern California might be considered three different markets, each with different populations and, from the hiring perspective, price points. The staffing firms will be earning their keep in part by tracking all this and continually informing Defense Health Agency officials of what sourcing medical staff will cost and why.
Third, private or civilian-sector healthcare staffing experts bring an outside perspective with a vivid sense of the state of play in healthcare. For example, they’re successfully advocating for telehealth in areas such as behavioral health and clinical social work. That can lower costs, accelerate the time to fill vs. on-base personnel, and attract talent who may not want to commute or relocate. In general, the flexibility built into the MQS2-NG contract has fostered more collaborative interactions between these staffing experts and Defense Health Agency officials, and I’m confident it’s going to result in a much better fill rate than 71%, sooner than later.
Military innovation comes in many forms. A revolution in how the U.S. military recruits for and staffs its hundreds of healthcare facilities may not be as evocative as a swarm of autonomous drones. But its impact on military readiness and the wellbeing of its personnel will be far more profound.
Editor’s note: The author’s company was one of the healthcare medical staffing agencies awarded contracts.
About Matrix Providers
Matrix Providers offers healthcare workers rewarding federal career opportunities and stability through low provider-to-patient ratios and fair, reliable schedules at government facilities. Headquartered in Denver, the company employs hundreds of medical professionals across the country to care for America’s military, families and veterans. For more information or to see Matrix Providers’ current list of positions, visit https://matrixproviders.com/.
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