Department of Defense Increases Investment in Patient Centric Modernization

Investments in constituent experiences (CX) are a key part of agency modernization strategies today across the federal government. But while most of these CX investments are directed towards external end users of agency services, the Department of Defense’s embrace of CX improvements is slightly different. For the DoD, their end user is the warfighter and their family and the need to improve their experience in interacting with the complex bureaucracy has never been more important as part of retention and recruitment goals.

While much of the public conversation has focused on access to IT, training, and recognition, one of the other areas in which the DoD is improving CX is in healthcare. Investments in patient centric modernization are rising and in this episode of the Clickthrough podcast on Government Technology Insider, Hillary Fredrick had the opportunity of speaking to Seileen Mullen, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Ms. Mullen has spent nearly 30 years within the military healthcare ecosystem and shares her insights on the strategies that are enabling military health agencies to rethink, redefine, and reimagine integrated health services that are critical to warfighter readiness to ensure that customer experience is at the center of innovative care models.

During the conversation Mullen shared that our “patients are now the drivers. They get to decide how and when they want to be seen, and not the other way around. It’s no longer about the number of times we get them in the waiting room. It’s about meeting the patients where they are in their lives at the time they need care ... Under My Military Health, which is a comprehensive blend of self-guided care-on-demand and scheduled virtual care and interactive messaging to better manage care plans between medical appointments. Today, we have five pilot sites, and we're rolling them out system wide, beginning in 2025.”