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The Defense Health Agency implemented a new system for patient advocates to track and manage patient feedback across the Military Health System.
The Patient Advocate Assistance Reporting Tool, or PAART, is the "new standardized, enterprise-wide system that will manage all patient feedback that is received by the patient advocates at all of our military medical treatment facilities," said Cmdr. Gabrielle Crane, chief of the patient experience branch at DHA.
The primary goal of PAART is to use patient feedback provided to drive improvements within military hospitals and clinics, Crane said. The system was developed to replace inconsistent legacy methods and give patient advocates a new platform to efficiently collect, track, and resolve patient concerns.
"It's standardized and consistent," she explained. "The old process was fragmented within each MTF, and patient advocates had differing processes for how they managed feedback. The new system is exciting because now it will be streamlined and provide transparency enterprise-wide."
For military hospital and clinic leadership, PAART will provide data across the MHS and make better decisions to ensure data-driven improvements — ultimately enhancing the overall patient experience and safety.
At the core of the new platform are the patient advocates who help patients navigate the MHS.
“An advocate is the shipmate, the battle buddy, and the wingman," said Crane. “PAART enables an advocate to document interactions and ensure warm handoffs and transfers to the appropriate person who can provide service recovery."
Capturing the patient experience
PAART is a web-based secure portal designed to collect a wide range of patient interactions, including concerns, complaints, and compliments. Advocates can select preestablished fields including case date, type, location, and patient category.
The system categorizes cases by severity, which dictates the timeline for resolution:
Emergent cases, posing an immediate threat to life or safety, are flagged for immediate action.
Urgent cases, with a significant impact on health, have a 24-hour response time.
Routine casesare to be completed within 10 business days.
Crane noted PAART’s technology will flag cases to ensure meeting those windows, giving leaders "at each level an awareness of those timelines and where we are in meeting them."
The tool will be used by all patient advocates at the unit, facility, and network levels. Using the PAART system is mandatory for patient advocates — and a vital measure of effectiveness. PAART data can be used to analyze patient feedback and identify common trends, which ultimately assist in developing solutions as well as inform training programs for military hospital and clinic staff. The portal enables advocates to inform supervisors or military hospital and clinic leadership of concerns expressed by patients in their local area.
"It will allow us to see how we're doing across the entire system," Crane said. "We will be able to identify which areas we can work on or which areas we can leverage and are doing well. We can learn best practices and incorporate those best practices across our system."
Improving patient experience through PAART
Crane said the new system "allows transparency at all levels: at the MTF level, at the network level, and at headquarters.”
Through centralizing feedback, the DHA aims to foster a "culture of continuous improvement," Crane said. She noted the system strengthens trust by showing patients that the DHA created it with them in mind: When feedback goes into a system where it can be tracked, trended, and escalated, it counters the feeling that a complaint "goes nowhere."
"This was designed with the patient at the center of everything we're doing," she added, “we want to make sure that our patients’ voices are being heard and that they're being provided with the appropriate service recovery. That is what’s necessary to ensure the patient journey and experience is where it needs to be.”
Safeguards are in place to protect patient confidentiality. All users of PAART must complete Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act training, and patients can choose not to provide certain demographic information if they feel uncomfortable.
Looking ahead, Crane envisions technology will always evolve and that "we are here to ensure that our patient advocates at the MTFs have the tools, resources, and training that they need to successfully complete their job and be the advocate our beneficiaries deserve.”
| Date Taken: | 01.23.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 01.23.2026 14:58 |
| Story ID: | 556665 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 24 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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