Improving Guard and Reserve medical readiness is among the recommendations made by a congressionally appointed group of military and health care experts that spent a year studying the military's health care system.

The comprehensive report released Dec. 20 by the Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care makes a dozen recommendations for improving the world's largest military health program.

The findings-based on meetings with subject-matter experts, current and former service members and other beneficiaries-urge increased integration of systems, more efficient procurement and contracting processes and an expansion of benefits.

"This is the best course of action because this is an integrated report," Gen. John D.W Corley, who began last year as Air Force vice chief of staff and is now the commander of Air Combat Command, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

Corley and Dr. Gail Wilensky co-chair the panel.

Wilensky is also a member of a bipartisan committee charged by President Bush to fix problems with wounded warrior care revealed by media reports last year of sub-par outpatient treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warrior's recommendations released in July also urged significant changes.

Other suggestions in the more recent report include modifying pharmacy benefits into a tiered structure, auditing financial controls and developing a new set of metrics for assessing health care transformation.

The task force began its work in December 2006 after Defense secretary Robert M. Gates appointed 14 members to the panel as directed by the fiscal 2007 defense authorization act.

The group was charged to address 10 topics relevant to the future of military health care and issue a final report with its assessment and recommendations within 12 months.

Task force members assessed the Defense Department's level of preparation for disease, health education programs, accounting practices, procurement and contracting processes, and beneficiary and government cost sharing, among other matters.

Some recommendations outlined in the report require congressional action, the task force co-chairs said.

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