• Justin P Fox, Ryan E Earnest, and Valerie Sams.
• 88th Medical Group, Wright Patterson Medical Center, Wright Patterson AFB, OH 45433, USA.
• Mil Med. 2024 Mar 30.

IntroductionMilitary-Civilian Partnerships (MCPs) are vital for maintaining the deployment readiness of military health care physicians. However, tracking their clinical activity has proven to be challenging. In this study, we introduce a locally driven process aimed at the passive collection of external clinical workload data. This process is designed to facilitate an assessment of MCP physicians' deployment readiness and the effectiveness of individual MCPs.Materials And MethodsFrom March 2020 to February 2023, we conducted a series of quality improvement projects at the Wright Patterson Medical Center (WPMC) to enhance our data collection efforts for MCP physicians. Our methodology encompassed several steps. First, we assessed our existing data collection processes and their outcomes to identify improvement areas. Next, we tested various data collection methods, including self-reporting, a web-based smart phone application, and an automated process based on billing or electronic health record data. Following this, we refined our data collection process, incorporating the identified improvements and systematically tracking outcomes. Finally, we evaluated the refined process in 2 different MCPs, with our primary outcome measure being the collection of monthly health care data.ResultsOur examination at the WPMC initially identified several weaknesses in our established data collection efforts. These included unclear responsibility for data collection within the Medical Group, an inadequate roster of participating MCP physicians, and underutilization of military and community resources for data collection. To address these issues, we implemented revisions to our data collection process. These revisions included establishing clear responsibility for data collection through the Office of Military-Civilian Partnerships, introducing a regular "roll call" to match physicians to MCP agreements, passively collecting data each month through civilian partner billing or information technology offices, and integrating Office of Military-Civilian Partnership efforts into regular executive committee meetings. As a result, we observed a 4-fold increase in monthly data capture at WPMC, with similar gains when the refined process was implemented at an Air Force Center for the Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills site.ConclusionsThe Military-Civilian Partnership Quality Improvement Program concept is an effective, locally driven process for enhancing the capture of external clinical workload data for military providers engaged in MCPs. Further examination of the Military-Civilian Partnership Quality Improvement Program process is needed at other institutions to validate its effectiveness and build a community of MCP champions.© The Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2024. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site–for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

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