How often can a commander say, "Thanks"

  • Published
  • By Col. Gloria Twilley
  • 509th Medical Group commander
WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. --  I take this opportunity, to publicly thank the men and women of the 509th Medical Group for their untiring commitment to providing health care to the beneficiaries of Team Whiteman. 

The 509th MedGp recently had our three-year accreditation inspection. I used the term "untiring" commitment, because for the last eight months the medical group has been in a sustained high operations tempo since November with the Joint Nuclear Surety Inspection, the conventional operational readiness inspection and culminating in the medical group's accreditation inspection from the military's Health Services Inspection and the Association for Ambulatory Health Care, Inc. 

Allow me to delineate the medic's role in each of these critical inspections for the wing.
Our motto is "No Health, No Stealth," the medics take the meaning of our motto very seriously ... the JNSI evaluated how well we provided medical oversight of the wing's personnel reliability program, 1,300 medical records were carefully scrutinized for any potentially disqualifying information...that information is passed on to the commander for disposition. 

It takes a team of doctors, nurses and technicians to review all 1,300 medical records from cover to cover ... the medics in collaboration with the 509th Mission Support Squadron attained an "Excellent" rating on the personnel reliability program. 

The medics had a pivotal role in the recent CORI, where they demonstrated how they could function in treating the injured and wounded in a combat zone, again in collaboration with the wing the medics pulled another "Excellent" rating. Self aid and buddy care was a key node of the evaluation. 

Tech. Sgt. Jessica Despot, SABC Adviser to the bomb wing, spent countless hours training 83 SABC instructors and 1,074 CORE/CORI members. 

She also assisted with moulaging more than 100 casualties during the exercises/inspections. The moulage victims added a tremendous amount of realism to the exercise injects for the evaluation teams. 

The inspection team rated the subject matter experts as a superior performer team and additionally identified four medics as individual superior performers. 

However, evaluations were not quiet over for the medics: A nine-member team from headquarters Air Force Inspection Agency, directorate of medical operations, performed a health services inspection of the 509th MedGp from July 9-13. 

The team rated the medical care with an "Excellent" rating. Five areas were outstanding, to include deployment processing, medical readiness training, operational medicine, epidemiology and public health surveillance and behavioral health. 

The team stated that the 509th MedGp is providing excellent health care to the beneficiary population of the 509th Bomb Wing, ACC and the DoD. 

Beneficiaries were satisfied with both the quality of the health care provided and the services available. 

The three-member AAAHC team did not have any findings for the 509th MedGp. The AAAHC will forward their final report to the clinic in 45 days. 

Now that our health care delivery service has been validated, the medics are taking some much deserved rest and recuperation. 

A thanks to Team Whiteman for your support during our accreditation inspection, it's through the feedback that we get from you, our beneficiaries, that enable us to deliver the kind of quality health care that is relevant for this bomb wing. 

We continue to solicit feedback from you on how we can improve upon our services. 

You can provide direct feedback to our patient advocate office or fill out a comment card once you've received care at the medical group. We have suggestion boxes located throughout the clinical areas.
 
Again, thanks to the men and women of the MedGp who were engaged directly (JNSI & CORI) and indirectly (the staff who kept the day-to-day operations going during diminished staffing for the JNSI & CORI), it takes team effort to keep our organization afloat. 

I would like to close with comments from Col. Eric Single, former 509th BW vice commander. He sent his thanks to the men and women of the 509th MedGp: "It's been wonderful working with your talented team over the years ... you are truly all superior performers. 

Professionals like you are what make Team Whiteman excel ... time after time after time, and why it's quite true that "No Health, No Stealth!" is right on target. 

Again, to the men and women of the 509th MedGp, thanks for your dedicated service to the 509th BW. 

Also thanks for liking what you do, and liking how you do it and your dedicated service to Team Whiteman.

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