Why Developing a Digital Health Workforce is Key for MHS
As part of our efforts to engage in effective digital health transformation for active duty servicemembers and other beneficiaries, the Military Health System (MHS) will need to build a workforce that is appropriately skilled in transforming care delivery by leveraging digital tools.
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December 12, 2023 by Dr. Jonathan Woodson
As part of our efforts to engage in effective digital health transformation for active duty servicemembers and other beneficiaries, the Military Health System (MHS) will need to build a workforce that is appropriately skilled in transforming care delivery by leveraging digital tools. Many MHS health professionals already rely on select digital tools to reduce administrative burden and enhance their interactions with patients and beneficiaries (e.g., virtual and telehealth services, robotic surgery). However, many health care professionals believe that the digital tools introduced by their organization do not add the expected value and may even get in the way of care delivery due to a lack of streamlined integration into existing workflows. Similarly, some clinicians have expressed concerns about the reliability, safety, privacy protection and liability issues at play around digital care delivery, as well as their own proficiency in using these tools with confidence.
To address these issues, our digital workforce strategy for the MHS must take these experiences, attitudes and skill deficits into account and (1) identify the appropriate education and skills needed across MHS health professional roles; and (2) upskill the current workforce while also recruiting and developing the workforce of the future. This installment of our Digital Health Transformation article series explores these and other workforce-related ambitions of the MHS.
Identifying the right mix of education and skills
MHS care models, including those that leverage digital tools, will continuously evolve. As part of that evolution, tasks within those models, as well as entire services, may shift between different health professionals (e.g., from physicians to nurses, from nurses to nursing assistants), as well as between different settings (e.g., from inpatient to outpatient, from outpatient to home care). As such, all MHS leaders and health professional roles and care settings will need to be evaluated and enhanced to as part of our digital transformation strategy.
Previously defined skill and educational requirements include experience operating digital devices, the ability to provide critical appraisal of data and statistics, digital ethics knowledge, an understanding of digital security principles and automation bias, and key interpersonal skills (e.g., shared decision-making, person-centered communication skills, ability to work well in a team environment). To keep pace with the rate of change around technology and other tools, the MHS should consider codifying and integrating updated skill requirements into the knowledge-skills-abilities (KSA) requirements. This information is regularly defined and updated across professional roles and ties back to the Department of Defense’s determination of the clinical readiness of the medical force.
Upskilling the current workforce
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Dr. Jonathan Woodson is the President of the Uniformed Services University and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. (Photo credit: Tom Balfour, USU) |
Once established, training modules should be delivered through flexible means, including e-learning and simulations, to accommodate varying digital literacy capabilities among health professionals. Health staff who don’t directly serve patients (e.g., administrators, data analytics professionals, acquisition personnel) will similarly benefit from relevant upskilling to ensure that the right digital technologies are selected to advance care provision, customer service and other key care-related functions.
To meet the demand for upskilling its health workforce, the MHS should consider seeking partnerships with professional organizations and societies as well as private-sector health care organizations and academic institutions to ensure appropriate training opportunities are widely available to health professionals. For example, in both Texas and Washington state, MHS clinicians acquire and update their KSA-relevant competencies to maintain readiness in collaboration with private-sector organizations.
Attracting and retaining the workforce of the future
The MHS also needs to leverage workforce development efforts as part of its digital health strategy to establish digitally enabled care models and ensure their continued evolution. This approach will require more than a mere “straight-lining” of workforce needs based on traditional forecasting methods. Instead, workforce transformation efforts should rely on scenario planning based on the need for future care models and care provision to support active-duty and other beneficiary populations. Key actions include analyzing and developing models to anticipate the evolution of the MHS and its care provision in the future, aligning care models to future U.S. defense planning and utilizing estimates provided by health expert groups (e.g., health futurists). As such, this planning may be best described as examining plausible futures for the MHS rather than using statistical predictions with known error margins.
The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) strategic plan lays the groundwork for workforce training. It focuses on the enabling functions that will allow the USU to incorporate future digital health requirements into the curriculum and training opportunities for future MHS clinical professionals. USU faculty should also consider both domestic and international digital health knowledge on the skills and attitudes needed for successful digital health transformation.
Most medical, nursing, pharmacy and dental schools have already begun integrating digital health into their curriculum. Following that example, USU faculty, in consultation with key stakeholders, will need to identify required and elective didactic course work and assessments for its students. In addition, digital health teaching and assessment methods can also be digitized (e.g., online training, virtual reality, augmented reality). Partnerships with other educational institutions, other health care organizations and the broader health industry will provide USU with greater access to thought leaders and other experts who can offer new educational offerings more rapidly. Given its mandate to train the next generation of MHS leaders, the USU must also focus on instilling leadership skills around clinical care and services, technology and change management.
Summary
Current and future MHS leaders must build and maintain trust in ever more complex technologies, engage with the workforce, and manage cultural and work process changes to enable a learning organization empowered by digital technology. Prioritizing upskilling, improving training offerings, building tomorrow’s workforce today and enabling excellence in education at the USU will be an integral part of transforming the MHS for the good of our armed forces and indeed the nation as well.
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