GAO: DOD not tracking mental health assessments
By Peter Buxbaum
Friday, September 12, 2008
The Defense Department has the technology to track post-deployment mental health paperwork soldiers are now required to file. But DOD’s oversight of those rules has been so sketchy that it has been impossible to evaluate the degree to which the service members are completing the forms.
That was the key conclusion drawn by a study conducted by the Government Accountability Office and released Sept. 4.
The problem dates back to 2004, when U.S. Army researchers found a significant increase in the number of service members reporting mental health concerns.
Under DOD’s March 2005 policy, each of the military services was asked to electronically submit completed post-deployment health reassessments (PDHRAs) to the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS).
DMSS, operated by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC), contains data on diseases, medical events, and deployment health assessments. AFHSC performs medical surveillance and reporting on rates of diseases and injuries among service members.
“Although DOD established PDHRA requirements and policies, it gave the military services discretion to implement them to meet their unique needs as long as the services adhere to the requirements and policies,” the GAO report noted.
DOD is supposed to oversee the military services' compliance with PDHRA requirements through a quality assurance program and is required to report to Congress on the program annually.
But, the GAO found, “DOD's oversight of its deployment health assessments does not provide DOD or Congress with the information needed to evaluate…the military services' compliance with deployment health assessment requirements.”
In a 2007 report, GAO recommended that enhance its quality assurance program, but, although DOD concurred with the recommendation, the department had not implemented it.
“As a result,” the GAO concluded, “DOD's quality assurance program cannot provide decision makers with reasonable assurance that service members complete the PDHRA.”
