JAMA Article on Transforming the Military Health System
A recent JAMA article was published that discusses transforming the Military Health System (MHS). It can be read for free here:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2663037
If you prefer PDF, here it is:
BUMED Special Pays Update – 14 NOV 2017
Here’s a BUMED special pays update I was forwarded by the MEC Chair at my command:
The DFAS payment delinquent issues have been communicated to the SG via Info Paper and elevated to the OASN (M&RA). We are asking that ASN(M&RA) work with the Service M&RAs to raise the issue to USD(P&R). We believe P&R can raise the issue with OSD(COMP), the reporting senior for DFAS.
As of 9 NOV 2017, there were 72 lists backlogged in the DFAS Defense Workload Operations System (DWOWS) dating back to 10 JUL 2017. Thirty of those lists have been at DFAS for more than 30 days, which have increased the payment delays to four months. Many of the lists are in a suspense status. For example, a list could contain three different special pays (IP, RB, BCP), the DFAS clerk could process entries for RB and IP to be paid and have not yet processes the entries for BCP. Further, some officers on the list may have had their pay processed while others are pending.
Additional personnel were hired at DFAS to help expedite processing the Medical Special Pays. The new staff did not understand the intricacies involved with medical special pays, thus the good faith effort has not decreased the amount of time to process requests, and has led to some incorrect payments.
Officers with questions should first contact their Command Special Pays Coordinator for assistance. If the Command Special Pays Coordinator needs further assistance with the officer’s question, they can e-mail or call the BUMED Special Pays Program office. BUMED Special Pays Program office can only provide the date of an officer’s special pay request was submitted it to DFAS. Once a request has reached DFAS, BUMED Special Pays Program office has no visibility of the request until after the pay has started. New pays are reflected on the LES as SAVED PAY.
BUMED Special Pays Program Manager is at DFAS Cleveland this week to address the backlog, expedite the processing of special pay requests, and determine a workable solution to process the FY-18 Special Pays. An update on the success of this trip will be provided in the next update.
The FY18 Medical Department Officers Special Pays NAVADMIN for active duty is expected to be release by mid December 2017. Officers will have 30 days from the release date of the NAVADMIN to submit requests for special pays effective 1 October 2017. Officers must meet the eligibility outlined in the FY-18 Special Pay Guidance. All remaining officers not already under a consolidated special pay contract must submit a special pays request to transition from legacy special pay to consolidated special pay by 28 January 2018.
CDR Drew’s Consolidated Pay Audit Spreadsheets
First you had Joel Schofer’s Promo Prep…over 5,900 downloads…4,329 are by my Mom…thanks, Mom…
Then you had Joel Schofer’s Fitrep Prep…over 1,500 downloads…1,234 are by my Mom…thanks again, Mom…
Now you have CDR Drew’s Consolidated Pay Audit Spreadsheets, which probably will not break the MCCareer download record because my Mom will not be downloading them.
One of the senior officers in my community, CDR Brendon Drew at NMC San Diego, used to be a pay officer and has been deep diving on the new consolidated pay plan. He’s created these Excel spreadsheets below for you to use when trying to audit your pay conversion and see if you are being paid correctly:
Staff Physician Who Received ISP and ASP Summer 2016 Pay Audit
Please note the following:
- These spreadsheets only work for physicians who were completely transitioned to the new pay system in FY 17. For example, if variable special pay (VSP), board certification pay (BCP) or any other legacy pay is listed on your September and/or October 2017 LES, these spreadsheets will not provide you with a reliable audit. Once you have “save pay” only on your LES for two straight months, then you can contact CDR Drew as detailed below for a pay audit.
- Save Pay = “new pay” and can be a combination of incentive pay (IP), continuation pay, and BCP depending on what you qualify for.
- CDR Drew’s strong recommendation is that you save your LESs for perpetuity. The DFAS/MyPay system will only let you retrieve them for the last year.
If you’d like help auditing your pay or have any questions about how to use the spreadsheets, contact CDR Brendon Drew (his email address is in the global address book) with your LESs from July of 2016 through October of 2017. If you don’t have your old LESs saved, your audit will likely require some pay office (PSD, DFAS, etc) assistance.
Updated Board Certification/MOC Reimbursement Instruction
The reimbursement process for board certification and maintenance of certification (MOC) is a process that you can easily screw up, causing yourself to lose out on reimbursement for these expensive requirements. BUMED just put out a new instruction that explains how to request reimbursement for these items, and I’d give it a read if this is applicable to you.
The two issues that trip up most physicians is the requirement to request funding 6 weeks in advance and when the request to reimbursement/exam process straddles a fiscal year change, so give special attention to those requirements. Here is the instruction:
BUMEDINST 1500.20A – Funding Professional Credentials and Certification Examinations
Consolidated Special Pay Profile – Attending with a Multiyear Agreement
This will be the last pay profile unless there are others people want. If you do want more, use the contact me tab to let me know. I hope they help people understand the new consolidated pay system.
Let’s assume this pay is for an O5 Emergency Medicine (EM) attending at NMC Portsmouth who has been in the Navy for 16 years, is board certified, has dependents, and signed a 4 year multiyear agreement. In other words…me. This is what I should see on my LES:
BASE PAY - $8,329.80 (O5 over 16 pay grade from the 2017 Basic Pay Table)
BAS - $253.63 (all officers get the same rate)
BAH - $2352.00 (O5 with dependents rate in zip code 23708 based on this calculator)
SAVE PAY -$4916.66 (IP rate with a 4 year retention bonus of $53K for EM from Table 2 of the Final Navy FY17 Pay Plan PLUS $6K/year of Board Certification Pay = $59K/year paid monthly)
TOTAL – $15,852.09/month
RETENTION BONUS 4 YEAR RATE – $40K paid as a lump sum (from Table 2)
ANNUAL TOTAL – $230,225.08 (hey, somebody has to pay for this blog, right?)
Consolidated Special Pay Profile – Junior Board Certified Attending
Let’s assume this pay is for a junior Emergency Medicine (EM) attending at NMC San Diego who had no prior service, did a 2 year GMO tour, 4 years of residency that ended in July 2017, has been an attending for 2 years, is now board certified, and has dependents. This is what that board certified attending should see on their LES:
BASE PAY - $6,446.40 (O4 over 8 pay grade from the 2017 Basic Pay Table)
BAS - $253.63 (all officers get the same rate)
BAH - $3,339.00 (O4 with dependents rate in zip code 92134 based on this calculator)
SAVE PAY -$4583.33 (IP only 1 year rate of $49K for EM from Table 2 of the Final Navy FY17 Pay Plan PLUS $6K/year of Board Certification Pay = $55K/year paid monthly)
TOTAL – $14,622.36/month
ANNUAL TOTAL – $175,468.32
PoF Blog Post – Financial Implications of Leaving a Military Medicine Position
One of my readers pointed me to this blog post on Physician on Fire, which many of you will find interesting:
Financial Implications of Leaving a Military Medicine Position
If you’d like my own thoughts on the value of a military pension, you can read them here:
My Service School OSR Update
I’m in zone for O6 in February, and I’ve attended a number of service schools recently, necessitating an update to my Officer Service Record (OSR). It took months and as the guy who wrote the Promo Prep, it was interesting to actually experience. Here’s how it went down…
This is what the service schools section of my OSR looked like at the start:
“NWC OFFCAMP SE” was added automatically (how nice is that!) in June when I completed JPME I via the Fleet Seminar Program, but the rest are quite old from 2011, 2002, and 2001.
This year I attended the MHS Capstone, Interagency Institute for Federal Healthcare Executives, and Navy Senior Legal Course, all of which are service schools but were not automatically added to my OSR.
How does the guy who wrote the Promo Prep update his service schools? Realizing that nothing is perfect, it might not work the first time, it’ll probably take quite a while, and wanting to get it over with, I used the e-mail, fax, and mailing option discussed in the Promo Prep all at the same time. Once and done! If it didn’t work, I was just going to send a letter to the board.
So, on one day after completing the courses I e-mailed, faxed, and snail mailed the required information.
First I got this:
I’m not sure if the address I have is wrong or the USPS just didn’t like my abbreviations, but the snail mail attempt clearly didn’t work.
Next, I started getting strange e-mails reminiscent of the ones you get when you put in a trouble ticket on your computer. I’m not sure if this was from the e-mail submission, the fax submission, or both. Here’s what one of them looked like:
From: ITSM Do Not Reply [mailto:DoNotReply@navy.mil]
To: Schofer, Joel M CDR USN NAVHOSP PORS VA (US)
Subject: Incident INC000002230401 with a Priority of Low has been logged for your issue
Importance: High
Incident INC000002230401 with a Priority of Low has been logged for your issue. This number should be retained for reference purposes.
Customer Site:
Product Type: Software
Nomenclature:
Common Name: CDM
Product Categorization Tier 2: ODC
Product Categorization Tier 3: SERVICE SCHOOL
Product Name:
Model/Version:
System Model Number:
Urgency: 4-Low
Status: Assigned
Summary: SERVICE SCHOOL (ODC BLK 52)
Notes: Request to add service school to Officer Data Card (ODC) to reflect course number 595, SEP 2017, 1 WK
We look forward to providing you continued support.
I particularly like the part where they say my request is low priority.
They then told me I already had too many service schools and needed to pick which ones I wanted:
From: ITSM Do Not Reply [mailto:DoNotReply@navy.mil]
To: Schofer, Joel M CDR USN NAVHOSP PORS VA (US)
Subject: INC000002211696
CDR Schofer,
A maximum of seven service schools can be assigned and you currently have seven. Please indicate which service schools 04D and 059 will replace on your ODC.
Send information to Xxxx.Xxxx.ctr@navy.mil. Reference incident number 2211696 in the subject line.
Wow! A person who is going to help me resolve this problem. My faith in the system has been restored.
I told them to just remove the oldest service schools and replace them with the new ones. I then got this message:
From: ITSM Do Not Reply <DoNotReply@navy.mil>
To: CDR Joel Schofer
Subject: Incident INC000002230401 reported by you has been resolved. SERVICE SCHOOL (ODC BLK 52)
ReplyTo: ITSM Do Not Reply <DoNotReply@navy.mil>
Dear JOEL SCHOFER,
We are pleased to inform you that your reported Incident has been resolved.
Reference No.: INC000002230401
Summary: SERVICE SCHOOL (ODC BLK 52)
Your reported Incident has been resolved with the following resolution: CDR Schofer,
Your online record has been updated to include service school code 595. Allow at least two weeks for changes to reflect on your ODC after online systems update.
Please do not hesitate to contact the Service Desk should there be any further questions or inquiries regarding your Incident. Please quote your assigned Reference Number.
Yours sincerely, Service Desk
This is what the final product looked like:
As you can see, my three new service schools are all there, and my record is ready for my O6 board. It took about 3 months in total, and involved a returned envelope and some strange e-mails, but thanks to whoever at NSIPS addressed this issue for me.
Director, Defense Veterans Brain Injury Center – O6 Only
This position is narrowly tailored for an 06 Medical Corps officer with experience in traumatic brain injury (TBI). The report date is March 2018. The position description is here:
Position Description – Director, Defense Veterans Brain Injury Center
Interested parties should send a CV/BIO to BUMED via their Specialty Leader by 21 Nov.
Joel Schofer's Career Planning Blog 