MDS monitors wing temperature, helps maintain readiness

  • Published
  • By Bryan Magaña
  • 419th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
HILL AIR FORCE BASE, UT -- --  The 419th Medical Squadron will be prepping more needles than usual this New Year. The squadron's workload has increased since the 419th Fighter Wing's Total Force Integration with the 388th Fighter Wing due to reservists deploying alongside active duty Airmen.

Although the MDS still outprocesses only reservists, the frequency of deployments has increased. While units in the mission support group still deploy independent of active-duty rotations, other units, such as those in the operations and maintenance groups, deploy more often due to the collaborative nature of their mission with the active duty.

"The impact on us has been significant," said Senior Master Sgt. Kim Luckart, the MDS Health Services Management Supervisor. "The rotations used to be every two years, but now there are members going out every month, not to mention our own [mission support] rotations."

Sergeant Luckart describes outprocessing days as non-stop, no-break work days. She can fit in one person every half-hour, which comes to about 16 people per day.

But for the members and the MDS staff, the process begins long before outprocessing day.

Ninety days out, the MDS receives a spreadsheet of 419th members scheduled to deploy. They identify any medical and dental checkups needed, including immunizations, which are location-specific for each deployment. For in-theater locations, this can include shots for typhoid, anthrax, and small pox. Reservists are given 90 days - or three UTAs - to get the required vaccines.

Sergeant Luckart wants reservists to go the extra mile when it comes to pre-deployment preparedness, encouraging them to get all vaccines, even if they are not a known threat to the area to which they are deploying.

"That's how terrorists work," she said, noting that they could introduce a health threat, like anthrax, where and when it is least expected.

"We're safety belting them in before they go to war," Sergeant Luckart said. The MDS also relies on civilian medical professionals and unit health monitors to keep the Airmen on top of their physical and mental health, and ready to deploy.

The medical squadron's goal is to make certain that reservists are medically ready to deploy at all times. Every month, Luckart analyzes and updates a spreadsheet that determines what percentage of the wing is "in the green," or ready to deploy, ensuring the numbers meet Air Force Reserve Command's standard of 80 percent.

"You want your wing ready to go," Sergeant Luckart said. "We should maintain a deployable status all the time."

Reservists come to the MDS three days before they leave, where Sergeant Luckart uses an outprocessing checklist to verify the members' health.

"It sounds funny that we wait until those three days, but we've already given them 90 days," Sergeant Luckart said.

And there is a method to waiting: Three days before the members leave, their status is changed to active duty. On outprocessing day, if they are still missing vaccines or need a last-minute check-up, they have full access to the base medical facilities.

Before members leave, they must also fill out a pre-deployment questionnaire online.

"That pre-deployment form has some indicators on whether they can go," Sergeant Luckart said. Those indicators include physical wellbeing and life skills. These are usually not issues for the 419th FW, she said.

The mission of the MDS is "medically ready reservists, and ready medical reservists."

"If you take our mission and split it into Saturday and Sunday, you have a model of how our UTAs work," Sergeant Luckart said.

On Saturdays, 70 to 80 reservists man the lab, the flight doc area, and the dentist office in the base clinic, performing check-ups and giving vaccines. On Sundays, they are being trained to ensure their skill levels are up to date.

During the week, the MDS runs on a full-time staff of four.