Source: United States Navy
When American warfighters are called to the battlefield, years of training and exercises allow our warriors to pull the triggers and send projectiles downrange, hitting targets. Just as they trained throughout the many exercises that prepared them for the fire fight.
Similarly, when warfighters need emergency or non-emergency preventative assistance of any type, the expectation is he or she will receive world-class medical care. That care has reduced battlefield fatalities by 92 percent with advanced training and significant medical and technological advances with battlefield medicine throughout the past century.
In 2016, the U.S. Army Surgeon General spoke to the Defense Writer’s Group and expressed the significant battlefield technological advances that have increased the percentage of those injured on the battlefield making it back home alive. Lt. Gen. Nadja Y. West said about 92 percent of Soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan returned home safely.
“That’s the highest percentage in the history of warfare, despite the rising severity of battle injuries from increasingly lethal weapons,” West said.
Medical efforts to address the diverse health threats from accession through mission execution seek to sustain and restore warfighters’ overall health, increasing performance and deployability. Investments are focused on materiel and knowledge-based medical solutions, including the delivery of improved combat casualty care, enhanced survivability, reduced impact of injury, and optimized downrange medical footprint.
NMRLC on Cheatham Annex, Williamsburg, VA, and lead by Cmdr. Matthew P. Marcinkiewicz, is a major part of the Navy’s downrange footprint and its ability to deliver care anywhere at any time. As the Department of Defense’s (DoD) only expeditionary medical production facility that has an embedded design staff, NMRLC develops and produces “tailor made” platforms to support any medical capability requirements.
NMRLC Design Team Director Cmdr. Jeremy Schwartz, explained the different platforms.
“We accomplish this mission by providing the Expeditionary Medical Facility (EMF), forward deployed platforms with Role Three medical and surgical capabilities designed to increase the survivability of those injured in a combat theater,” he said. “Role Three support has additional capabilities, including specialist diagnostic resources, specialist surgical and medical capabilities, preventive medicine, food inspection, dentistry, and operational stress management teams.”
NMRLC is responsible for building and maintaining rapidly deployable medical systems to support contingency operations, humanitarian assistance, and real-world events and exercises around the globe. To address emerging requirements more responsively, Navy Medicine transformed the legacy Fleet Hospitals into more agile, flexible, scalable, modular EMFs to support the full range of military operations.
The unique capabilities provided by the experts who comprise NMRLC saves lives. The command has a uniquely diverse staff of active duty, Government Civilians, and a team of dedicated contract support personnel. Together, they embody the idea of strength through diversity, and it is this mix of diverse experts that allows NMRLC to be the most capable and adept command within DoD regarding the design, production, and delivery of deployable medical capabilities.
The NMRLC Design Team is an integral element in delivering the scared promise to care for uniformed men and women, our nation’s most precious asset, anywhere and everywhere they are called to serve. The men and woman who design the battlefield hospitals work to plot, design, and create scalable and tailorable deployable medical facility design supporting from 10 to 144-bed staffed by the world’s best military doctors, nurses, corpsmen, and technicians ensuring our nations service members return home safely.