Download or read book Unified Medical Command and Control in the Department of Defense written by Anthony R. Nesbitt and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delivering health care to service members, retirees and their family members is essential to the morale and readiness of the Armed Forces. Indeed, it is viewed as a contract with service members to keep them healthy and treat them when they are sick or wounded. It is becoming increasingly more difficult for Defense Health Program (DHP) to deliver on this contract, however. At an estimated $57 billion last year, the contract is not cheap. Defense spending, in general, faces tremendous scrutiny and the Military Health System (MHS) constitutes a significant portion of defense spending. This makes military health care a target for budget cuts. The MHS must rethink how supports the force, in both the operational and institutional medicine arenas. All options must be on the table and the toughest options may require radical changes to do the most good. Any solution must deliver cost savings, which means that some protected aspects of the MHS will need to change.