A single healthcare system in peace, crises, and war? – expert survey on the future of the military medical services

The importance of military defence has increased in recent years. However, the Norwegian Armed Forces cannot handle all the related challenges alone and thus the total defence approach has increased in significance and emerged as an even more important strategic area in recent years.

Several characteristics of the collaboration on health care services within Total Defence, including the military medical services in the Armed Forces, is described in The Norwegian Military Medical Services of the Future – An Effective Resource in the Armed Forces and for Total Defence (FFI report 22/01114).

To validate these findings and assessments and gain cross-sectorial acceptance and support, FFI performed an expert survey, which is a non-random, non-anonymous survey, among employees in the health care system and the Norwegian Armed Forces. Our report provides a summary of the results from the expert survey. The survey consisted of an online survey, statistical analyses, and a workshop, where 70 experts represented various entities in the Norwegian healthcare system. In addition, the Norwegian Defence Commission and the Total Preparedness Commission were represented.

The survey participants were tasked to share the results and discuss the insights with their professionally close colleagues. Doing so would contribute to a transparent dialogue about the findings. Our results showed that those who spend less time on cross-sectorial preparedness and interaction answer important questions significantly differently and prioritise various claims differently compared to those who spend much time on cross-sectorial interaction. Civilian employees outside the defence sector but within the Total Defence co-operation work significantly less with these issues than those in the defence sector. This difference impacts the interaction and contributes to maintaining the status quo in the further development of the healthcare system. We also find that much of the daily emphasis is about improving the existing strengths and opportunities in today’s civil-military cooperation.

In other words, the experts in the survey prioritise more of what is already being done and neglect improving weaknesses and threats to the co-operation. The expert survey essentially confirms the assessments and findings described in The Norwegian Military Medical Services of the Future – An Effective Resource in the Armed Forces and for Total Defence (FFI report 22/01114). The overall impression is that the experts expect that the Military Medical Services in 2040 will probably not be too different from today in terms of organisation, expertise, and equipment.