Navy developing plan to transfer medical positions to civilians

Navy personnel officials are developing a plan to reduce the number of uniformed health care personnel and transfer much of the service's medical responsibilities to civilian employees and contractors.

Officials at regional medical facilities are poring over their personnel and individual situations to determine which jobs can be transferred to the civilian workforce, according to Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Weber, division director for Manpower Operations at the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. The program, which Weber described as a "human capital transformation," is part of the Pentagon effort to move civilians and contractors into positions that do not require military personnel.

"We are asking commands to examine conversions that we have proposed at the moment, and we are asking for their input," Weber told Government Executive on Tuesday. "That input is due to us at the end of August."

According to Weber, medical facilities are being asked if the proposed conversions are affordable and if replacement civilian personnel are available in the area. Regional officials also are being asked for a plan on how they would execute the conversions.

"We are looking and have been looking for some time … at what needs to be in uniform and what doesn't need to be in uniform," Weber said. "From a Navy medicine standpoint, it's really readiness."

Cmdr. Kevin Magnusson, deputy director for manpower at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, said the effort eventually will reduce the number of medical personnel but not the quality of care.

The goal is to "provide the best possible health care, certainly not less health care, but a different flavor," Magnusson said. "We are reducing the number of military uniforms."

It is too early in the process to know which contractors will be involved in the transformation, he said.

Magnusson emphasized that no uniformed personnel will be compelled to leave the Navy as a result of the restructuring.

The final plan has yet to take shape, and personnel officials said the feedback they receive from regional facilities at the end of August will be thoroughly considered.

"We will certainly take and give full weight to what our commands have to say," Magnusson said. "But the medical system as a whole might require us to do us something a little different."

A shortage of qualified civilian replacements in a particular area could cause a shift away from the original plan, according to Weber. If personnel officials want to transfer nursing jobs to civilian Navy employees, for example, officials must determine if there nurses available.

"We may move that conversion to where the marketplace might be better able to handle [it]," Weber said. "We are able to see the global perspective. I expect those types of things will come, absolutely."