Military Health System Conference to Focus on Enhanced Healthcare Delivery & Patient Satisfaction

The Department of Defense (DoD) announced today the 2008 Military Health System (MHS) conference to be held Jan. 28-31 at Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, D.C. Leading an enterprise of more than 134,000 health care providers, senior MHS leaders will finalize 2008 plans to ensure top quality healthcare for all service members and beneficiaries.

"Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Gates charged me with being the guarantor of quality healthcare for service members, retirees and their families," said Dr. S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "Quality healthcare is the Secretary's top goal, apart from the war itself."

This year's conference focuses on the MHS Strategic Plan. All of the presentations for the conference will be aligned with the plan's goals and objectives including:

Enhance deployable medical capability, force medical readiness and homeland defense including humanitarian missions.
Sustain the military health benefit through top quality patient-centered care and long-term patient partnerships with a focus on prevention.
Provide globally accessible, real time, health information that enables medical surveillance and evidence-based healthcare.
Provide incentives to achieve quality in everything we do.
Develop our most valuable asset-our people.
Build and sustain the best hospitals and clinics; nurture a caring environment.

Casscells and conference organizers also expect to raise awareness among military and civilian communities worldwide regarding the value of military medicine, not only in combat care, but in research, education, international healthcare and humanitarian relief.

"The conference agenda is ambitious," Casscells said. "But it's the right event at the right time to energize our commitment to quality care throughout the entire enterprise."

This conference is unique since 3,000 individuals will attend and others will take part via telecommunications from Afghanistan and Iraq. All interested parties can view plenary sessions in live streaming video and receive daily updates at the MHS Web site, http://www.health.mil, beginning Jan. 28. In addition, all conference plenary sessions will be available via on-demand viewing and audio-podcasting for three months, beginning Feb. 7, 2008.