Author Description

The next step in the Fleet's efforts to enhance Authorized Minimum Medical Allowance List (AMMAL) efficiencies is the clinical validation of the individual AMMAL items and the development of an audit trail linking the items to their requirements. The primary objective of the study was to use this process to revise the Independent Duty Corpsman (IDC)-level AMMALs to contain only those items know to have a clinical task and a patient-driven clinical requirement. To accomplish this objective, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) developed IDC-level treatment profiles for 336 Patient Conditions (PCs) known to occur aboard ship. These profiles, consisting of individual tasks, described the step-by-step process of providing clinical care for each of the PCs in each IDC treatment location, including sick call, laboratory, battle dressing station, portable medicine locker, emergency and junior emergency response kits, first- aid kit, and antidote locker. Once the profiles were prepared, SMEs assigned the required materiel to the tasks. The items used by IDCs in sick call and the laboratory were then separated into either the IDC core (7002), the IDC supplemental (7001), the IDC laboratory core (7004), or the IDC laboratory supplemental (7003), and analyzed to assess the significance of the changes. Each of the 4 revised AMMALs were compared to the existing blocks to assess differences in the number of items, weight, cube, and cost. The results showed reductions for each measure in 3 of the 4 AMMAL blocks. These reductions, realized in all but the IDC laboratory supplemental, were achieved at the same time that clinical capability was increased. In addition, each proposed revision was coded to reflect the type of justification SMEs used when agreeing to add, delete, or move an item to another AMMAL.