'Until DoD develops and uses guidance to comprehensively assess the potential effect that reductions may have on MTFs, it risks taking actions that could decrease the ability of the military health system to achieve its mission of ensuring the medical readiness of the force and caring for military service members and their families,' according to the report.

The GAO noted, for example, that the services run the risk of not having enough people to care for casualties returning from a large-scale conflict. The watchdog warned that the DoD runs the risk of faltering patient care and may be unable to care for the combat wounded during wartime.

'This could lead to a number of undesirable outcomes,' the analysts wrote. With military treatment facilities unable to hire replacements or accommodate appointments, the staff cuts could send even more patients, including active-duty troops, to civilian providers. However, according to DoD officials, this is not always an available option, as previously noted,' GAO analysts wrote in their report, which is titled Additional Assessments Needed to Determine Effects of Active-Duty Medical Personnel Reductions. plan, hiring civilian employees would help mitigate the loss of active-duty medical personnel. The GAO noted that the DoD's top strategy for providing care for family members and retirees is to hire civilian providers or contract them, but it faces challenges given nationwide shortages of trained medical personnel and competition with the private sector and Department of Veterans Affairs. Instead, it used population assessments done in 2018 that only looked at the population of communities, the Tricare-eligible population and the number of military treatment facility (MTF) enrollees, along with any notes of known network limitations, rather than a deep-dive analysis of providers and available care. Regarding non-uniformed patients, including family members and retirees, the department developed a method for measuring the capability of the Tricare networks to absorb patients - but then didn't use its own methodology to assess those networks.

Brooke baldwin about hiring veterans