Braxton Taylor
Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, the Defense Health Agency’s top official, retired last week, according to a surprise announcement from the Pentagon on Friday.
Dr. Stephen Ferrara, acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said Crosland, who had served as the agency’s director for two years, was “beginning her retirement” effective Friday. No reason was given for her departure; Crosland had been scheduled to speak Monday at the AMSUS Society of Federal Health Professionals’ annual meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.
Her departure follows the high-profile firings last month of top military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. “CQ” Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife, and the services’ top attorneys.
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“I want to thank Lt. Gen. Crosland for her dedication to the nation, to the Military Health System, and to Army Medicine for the past 32 years,” Ferrara said in a statement.
Crosland graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1989 and earned her medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences before embarking on a career as a family medicine physician.
She was the fourth director of the Defense Health Agency and the third Black woman to reach the rank of lieutenant general in the Army.
When she assumed the role of DHA director, she pledged to focus on serving patients, creating a Defense Department medical system that best served active-duty members and their families.
Under her watch, the DHA completed the rollout of its MHS Genesis electronic health records system, a $5.5 billion program that provided and managed a new medical records system built to be interoperable with the Department of Veterans Affairs system.
The DHA also consolidated the organization’s 20 regional medical markets into nine networks led by a general or flag officer who has responsibilities for both the service medical command duties — taking care of active-duty personnel — and the DHA, which manages hospitals, training, supplies, procurement, and the Tricare health program for military dependents and retirees.
The news also follows reports of short- or understaffed military health facilities including Naval Hospital Bremerton, Washington, which planned to transfer roughly 700 Medicare-eligible internal medicine patients to civilian providers since shortages left the clinic manned with one physician for 2,200 beneficiaries, according to the Kitsap Sun.
Other hospitals, like Naval Hospital Okinawa, also have been chronically understaffed, resulting in stress for military personnel and families.
And last month, deferred maintenance at the system’s premier medical facility, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland — where President Donald Trump is scheduled to receive his annual physical next month — caused flooding and other system failures that delayed surgeries and sent patients elsewhere.
Since Jan. 1, patients who use the Tricare health program also have experienced delays in specialty referrals and care, while some providers still have not been paid in more than eight weeks following a changeover in Tricare regional contract management companies and payment processors in the Tricare East and West Regions.
As a result of those problems, Crosland issued a letter Feb. 3 to all Tricare beneficiaries saying the DHA had taken a number of steps to fix the issues and aimed to insulate patients from the turmoil.
“Individuals who need health care should get that care regardless of TriWest’s ability to manage the process,” Crosland wrote, referring to the Tricare West regional contractor, which assumed management of the West Region on Jan. 1.
According to Ferrara, Dr. David Smith, who served as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs in 2017 and from 2021 to 2022, will serve as acting DHA director.
Military.com reached out to Crosland on Monday for comment. She said she had nothing more to add than what had been released.
Related: Tricare to Allow Patients in Tricare West Region to Receive Specialty Care Without Preapproval
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