Defense Health: Actions Needed to Help Ensure Combat Casualty Care Research Achieves Goals

DOD estimates that about 24 percent of servicemembers who die in combat could have survived if improved and more timely medical care could be made available. Because multiple DOD organizations conduct research to develop medical products and processes to improve combat casualty care, it is critical that these organizations coordinate their work. It is also important that agencies monitor and assess their performance to help achieve organizational goals, which for DOD include addressing gaps in its capability to provide combat casualty care. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 directed GAO to review DOD s combat casualty care research and development programs. This report assesses whether DOD 1 uses a coordinated approach to plan this research and 2 monitors and assesses this research to determine the extent to which it fills capability gaps and achieves other goals. GAO reviewed DOD s policies and documentation interviewed officials from DOD and other federal agencies and analyzed metrics DOD used to gauge the progress of its research. GAO recommends that DOD 1 communicate the importance of early coordination among DOD s nonmedical organizations and 2 develop and implement a plan to determine the extent to which research fills gaps and achieves other goals. DOD concurred with these recommendations.