FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kansas  –    With the addition of three new health care providers, Munson Army Health Center leadership announced, Aug. 21, it has resumed booking routine primary care wellness exams that had been delayed when medically appropriate, since May.

Last April the health center shared that due to provider permanent change of station moves, retirements, deployments and other factors, Munson would experience a temporary decrease in the number of primary care providers it had over the summer, until new providers started in July.

“I’m happy to share today that in the past 45 days we’ve on-boarded three additional primary care providers who have completed their electronic health record workflow and policies and procedures training,” said Maj. Brian Turner, Munson’s Deputy Commander for Administration, during the monthly Fort Leavenworth Mayors Meeting. “Wellness exam appointments are now available, and we deeply appreciate the community’s patience while we experienced this temporary delay in access to care.”

Faced with having fewer appointment slots available over the summer, health care administrators had to establish a course of action that ensured Munson met its Soldier readiness mission and minimized impact to patients with acute and chronic healthcare needs.

“Together we’ve managed to get past this staffing hurdle and ensure we continued to provide safe, quality care. We had to make some very tough decisions specifically for wellness exams and sports physicals, but now we’re working past that,” said Turner.

When asked by a Mayors Meeting participant if Munson could schedule sports physicals yet, Turner said that the MTF is not at the point where it can book sports physicals specifically for that purpose, but patients could have sports physical paperwork completed in conjunction with their standard wellness exam.

He said that Munson will have another three providers coming on board by October.

“We think access to care is going to continue to increase, both for same day care and follow ups,” Turner said, “The team at Munson is extremely proud to serve this community. We have a long history of doing so, and we look forward to doing so, far in to the future.”

Visit https://munson.tricare.mil to learn more about services available from Munson.