The report, which was published in February 2008, paid tribute to Defence Medical Services personnel, working with the NHS, who provide world-class care. The MOD believes that the conclusions of the report will prove particularly helpful in determining the future of medical care in the Armed Forces.
While compiling the report the Committee had the opportunity to visit a number of key facilities, including the Royal Centre of Defence Medicine at Selly Oak in Birmingham, the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre Headley Court and a number of Ministry of Defence Hospital Units as well as witnessing for themselves Field Hospital training exercises. They also saw MOD and NHS personnel working together to deliver excellent care for Service Personnel.
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A number of initiatives and improvements have been initiated within the Defence Medical Services in recent months. These include the opening of a new ward annex at Headley Court in July 2007 in order to meet current and projected increased patient demand, the formation of a new Joint Medical Command on 1 April 2008 which incorporates the Defence Medical Education and Training Agency (DMETA), which ceased to be an Agency on 31 March, and will take on additional responsibilities, notably for Healthcare and the Defence Dental Services, in due course. In addition earlier this week Defence Secretary Des Browne announced an additional £24 million of funding for Headley Court.
"Over the last 18 months we have worked very hard to ensure that the medical care we provide remains world-class whether it is on the front-line or back in the UK. Every day our doctors, nurses and other medics give dedicated care to their patients, sometimes in the most arduous of circumstances on deployed operations. They are all a credit to the Armed Forces and they are saving lives that would previously have been lost.
"But we are not simply concerned with survival, we must do our very best to give those who have been wounded on operations a continuity of high quality care, including rehabilitation. The work of defence and national health medical staff at Selly Oak, Headley Court, and other facilities is vital to the care of our wounded, and the standard of this care has rightly been highly praised.
"We take very seriously the possibility that some Service personnel might develop a mental illness as a result of service and we are committed to providing them with high standards of care, just as we do for those who are physically injured. Recent measures include the deployment of mental health professionals on operations, to link with the provision of out-patient mental health care in the military community at the patient's home base. In-patient care, for the small number of patients for whom this is needed, is provided in a number of psychiatric units around the UK through the Priory Group. This is so that the majority of these patients can be treated much closer to their homes or parent units than when we ran our own in-patient facility at a single UK location." |
