The Health Pulse: What can public and private sector health care learn from military medicine?

On this episode Major General Elder Granger, M.D. US Army (retired) joins Greg to discuss health care and the military. Dr. Granger currently the President and CEO of THE 5Ps, LLC, a health care, education, and leadership consulting organization. He also serves on the board of directors for CignaHealth, Cerner and Defense Logistics Health. Dr. Granger’s interest in medicine started young with a high school science project on sickle cell anemia. Dr. Granger also participated in a summer program for the Arkansas National Guard in high school and later joined the National Guard, which began his military career. Dr. Granger became an active duty army medic before college and participated in ROTC throughout college and medical school. Greg begins by asking how medicine in the military is different from the private sector. Dr. Granger explains that in the military you learn to provide good medicine in challenging environments. For a condition like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), screening is critical and service men and women are routinely screened pre-deployment, during deployment and post-deployment. The private sector has a lot to learn from the military on screening and treatment for PTSD, and this can be applied to patients struggling with trauma from the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid epidemic and other events. Dr. Granger emphasizes the importance of removing the stigma around mental health and improving access to mental health services. He shared insights from a new study by Cigna on building greater resilience to reduce the health impacts of stressful circumstances. https://cignaresilience.com/  He also shared that telehealth can play a key role in improving access to care moving forward. Data from electronic health records (EHRs) can be used to get a more holistic view of patient health and identify early warning signs for mental health challenges and addiction. Data and enabling technology such as AI will play a pivotal role in the next big innovations in health care, including a future where Dr. Granger predicts we’ll be able to address social determinants of health head on to improve health and health care for all. Finally, Dr. Granger shares his best advice for the current administration on how to improve health care in the United States. All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.