AUSA Contemporary Military Forum (CMF): Army Surgeon General on Lessons Learned from Army’s Pandemic Response

Photo By Joseph Kumzak | Lt. Gen. R. Scott Dingle, Army Surgeon General, led a town hall Oct. 13 with other senior leaders where they discussed the successes and lessons learned from the Amy’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic at AUSA 2021.  

UNITED STATES

10.13.2021

Story by Ronald Wolf 

U.S. Army Medical Command

The Association of the United States Army, during its annual meeting, hosted a “Contemporary Military Forum” on lessons learned on the Army’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic, on Oct. 13, 2021.

The panel consisted of Lt. Gen. R. Scott Dingle, 45th Surgeon General of the Army and Commanding General, U.S. Army Medical Command; retired Lt. Gen. Paul A. Ostrowski, Countermeasure Acceleration Group; Maj. Gen. Robert F. Whittle, Deputy Commanding General, Army Northern Command; retired Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, President, Federal Programs, WSP; Maj. Gen. Joe D. Robinson, Commander, 3rd Medical Command (Deployment Support), U.S. Army Reserve; and Command Sgt. Maj. Victor J. Laragione, Army Medical Research and Development Command, Fort Detrick.

In his opening statement, Dingle said, “I am extremely biased, excited and pumped up over what the Army has done for our nation.” He told the story of the beginning of the Army effort on the war on COVID-19.

It was the first of March 2020, we had watched the pandemic start, we had watched it hit our Soldiers, our forces in Europe and Korea. We saw this tsunami coming and the Secretary of the Army said ‘enough is enough’.

We went to Health and Human Services. As we talked to the assistant secretary for health, the secretary at HHS said two things. We are here to support. And anything that you need we will provide it to you. I believe that’s what started the TLC. Not tender loving care but teamwork, leadership, and cooperation, across the entire DOD. It was a team that transcended not just the services, not just the interagencies, not just partnerships, but states, communities, local hospitals, and teamwork that was unprecedented on our watches. We weren’t running to the sounds of artillery and guns, but we were running to the sound of a silent enemy, COVID-19.

Medical was the main effort, he said, the heroes of the battle, the doctors, the nurses, the scientists, and the staffs. Unprecedented teamwork, leadership, and cooperation. People do not realize that the Army was assisting with the research and development (of treatments). They don’t realize the countermeasures that were being developed. It was all COMPOs. Not just medical but non-medical as well. Today we see 714,000 deaths and 44 million positive COVID cases. The trends are down over the past 7 days for deaths and hospitalization. It is imperative that we continue with force health protection for our Soldiers, civilians, family members and the nation. We got to where we are because of teamwork, the leadership and synergistic cooperation.


“ARNORTH showed tremendous leadership in sending their Soldiers to the hospitals,” said Dingle “We sent Urban Augmentation Medical Task Forces, which was based on the HHS field medical station of 86 personnel. HHS said we need smaller groups so we went back to HQDA and worked with COMPO 3 personnel as well as ARNORTH. The adaptability of those medical teams was tremendous. Now, with any medical response team, the UAMTF, the vaccine task force, the testing task force, whatever it is, the Army has adapted Army Medicine. COMPOs 1, 2, and 3 are one force adapting the organization to the mission.”

One of the things that occurred was the (high) number of mission assignments were taking our Active Duty medical units as well as the MEDCOM medical professionals out of the fight and affecting readiness. At a certain point, we knew would need the Reserve forces. We were taking from our military medical facilities these same providers for response teams and that was now impacting our hospitals. We had to use the total Army Medicine Force in our response.

We decided to tap into our Reserves with the retiree recall. We went to HRC and put out a call for retirees in the medical field who were willing to come back for a year of active duty service.

The initial response was more than 23,000. Of those about 11,000 were medical. We interviewed about 2,000 and brought back 364 from our retiree forces. Today, we still have 64 of those retirees serving. They augmented our hospitals where we were deploying medical professionals on medical response teams as part of the mission assignments. The retiree recall went very well. The retiree recall also helped bridge a gap we had with professional burnout.

In his closing statement Dingle said, “In combat, the one word that resonates with soldiers is the cry “medic” because they know the medic will respond. In the COVID environment, the world cried out “medic”. As Gen. McConville said, in this battle the heroes are the docs and nurses. They have responded across the joint force, not just Army Medicine but also the Navy and the Air Force Medicine. We had to get back in the fight. What has allowed us to do that is the teamwork and phenomenal leadership and synergistic coordination across interagencies, across the joint force, across all COMPOs—the Total Army Medicine Force. In the MEDCOM, more than 3,200 soldiers and medics deployed in support of this battle. We had enormous testing capability. The mantra of “detect, protect, and treat” by our medical professionals allowed us to answer the call, and we will continue to answer the call as a Total Army Medicine Force that supports not just our Soldiers and beneficiaries but also the joint force in our nation as required.”

• Date Taken: 10.13.2021
• Date Posted: 10.18.2021 16:53
• Story ID: 407252
• Location: US