Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
History
Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
Medicine, Military; Military hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Medical care -- United States
The District Supervisors soon found this a most expensive method of
accomplishing the work. The Bureau concurrently found it increasingly
unsatisfactory in its result—an army of physicians widely scattered,
whose work was difficult to control and well nigh impossible to
standardize. The requirements of the Bureau were very definite. As a
result, the Public Health Service developed the _medical unit_ plan of
organization, which, in brief, was the formation of groups of physicians
in the larger communities to make complete general and special
examinations and to give careful study to cases requiring treatment. The
results were so far superior to any previously obtained that the Bureau
of War Risk Insurance urged the District Supervisors to complete the
organization of their Districts along these lines and to use the
designated medical examiners as little as possible.
The next step in the development of the dispensary idea was the
establishing in the District Offices of large examining clinics staffed
by officers and appointees of the Public Health Service devoting their
entire time to this work and reinforced by the consultant services of
the best specialists which the cities afforded.
The growth of the District Offices had passed all expectation and a
serious problem faced the Public Health Service in enlarging these
offices in accordance with this plan. However, there was no question of
the wisdom of establishing in the District Offices adequate facilities
for making examinations, as this feature was one of vital importance to
the Bureau because on the accuracy and completeness of the examination
reports depended the award of disability and the determination of
compensation.
The Public Health Service faced this problem squarely and, loyally
supported by the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, demonstrated the wisdom
of this move. The Surgeon General went even further and established real
outpatient dispensary service in connection with certain examination
clinics in the District Offices and hospitals of his Service.
The Bureau of War Risk Insurance then assumed direct control of the
entire District organization and the Director, Colonel Forbes, after an
extended survey of this organization and the methods of furnishing
service to his patients, which took him into practically every District
Office and many of the larger cities served by medical units, evolved
the plan of extending dispensary service to every section of the
Country. With his keen insight into organization problems, one of his
first moves was to obtain Congressional authority to further divide the
Districts into sub-districts. He appreciated that each sub-district
office was a potential dispensary, the examination clinic in each
District Office and the medical unit at each sub-office being the
nucleus upon which to build a U. S. Veterans’ Bureau Dispensary Service.
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