Health Care Admin in Military

[BabyRN21]

Does anybody know of anyone who works in health care administration in the military? I'm curious to learn on exactly what they do, how often they deploy, what exactly you do during deployments.

[carolinapooh, BSN, RN]

They're called 'MSC' officers - part of the Medical Service Corps - in the Air Force. They are the medical administration branch of the medical corps. When MSCs deploy, regardless of the branch of service - they do the job they do while at home. They run the hospital and medical outposts, run the mede/aerovac sites, monitor patient movement in and out of the AOR, report to higher command how many patients are in the facility, how many are expected, and how many are being moved out (this is all tracked in a system called TRAC2ES). There may be other responsibilities based on the branch of service they are in, but they'll still have the basic responsibilities they have at home. How often they deploy will depend on their duty station and how their base/major command deploys people - in the Air Force they typically deploy every 18 months, just like most of the rest of us.

At home they do all of the above, and also work on other administrative responsibilities: they report to commanders at various levels, monitor Tricare administration, monitor and analyze health care budgets, conduct studies on the utilization of health care on their installation and within the service as a whole - all sorts of stuff. On my last deployment I had the opportunity to work closely with an MSC and learned a lot about what they do - it's actually a very interesting job.

[Kindhearted]

Thanks carolinapooh for that info. I've also been thinking about joining the military going into healthcare administration. Wasn't sure about what to expect with training and deployment though.