Bigger, expanded DOD medical mission next year

Maj. Daniel LaVorgna, extreme left, Innovative Readiness Training program manager for the U.S. Army active duty and reserve, talks about the completion of this year’s medical mission and next year’s expanded medical mission for the CNMI, during a press briefing in the Office of the Governor’s conference room yesterday afternoon. Also in the photo are U.S. Army Col. George Koklanaris, center, who is the deputy director for IRT, and Lt. Commander Shaun Shillady of the Navy Reserve Forces Command in Virginia. (FERDIE DE LA TORRE)

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Innovative Readiness Training will have a bigger, expanded medical mission in the CNMI next year.

Maj. Daniel LaVorgna, who is the Innovative Readiness Training program manager for the U.S. Army, disclosed in a news briefing yesterday in the Office of the Governor’s conference room that they already have an approved military application for medical mission for next year.

The IRT’s successful Wellness CNMI mission this year ended yesterday.

LaVorgna said they will be bringing back the same major supporting command and another brigade to lead it.

“What would be different is we will expand it to include a full month of services,” he said.

Because there’s a lot of costs and a lot of planning involved, they would like to get a little bit more return on that investment by lengthening the duration of the project, LaVorgna said.

He said they will also be adding an Air Force Reserve component in that mission next year.

For this year, LaVorgna said, the Air National Guard comprised the largest number after the Army Reserve, three from the Navy, and one active duty Army soldier that was part of that same team.

This mission has been a great training opportunity for their people, LaVorgna said. From a training perspective, he said this IRT mission for the participating units were estimated at about 12,800 hours of training.

“IRT is a training program, where we bring in service members to come in and work in their occupational specialty and provide services to the community,” he said.

For the benefits to the community, he said they’re estimating somewhere in the ballpark of $2.6 million to $2.8 million based on fair market value in the civilian sector.

“If you base it on Medicare reimbursement, it’d be more like about $1.3 million $1.6 million. So for the CNMI community, it’s of course a nice benefit to have those services at no cost,” LaVorgna said.

U.S. Army Col. George Koklanaris, who is the deputy director for IRT, said one of the key things he wants everyone in the CNMI to know is that they are indeed looking to expand their services next year.

“We get a lot of our feedback directly from the community itself, the number of patients that we’re able to see, the number of animals that we’re able to treat with our veterinary services, as well as our relationships that we built with the government of [the] CNMI and the various officials within the government. [This] give us a good idea as to what types of services are needed, and the length of time that we need to be here,” he said.

Koklanaris said they are looking to expand not just their their services in fiscal year 2024, but also lengthening the number of days that they will be here on the ground.

“So we’re hoping that each year we’re able to build on those various missions and provide even more services to the Commonwealth,” he said.

LaVorgna said that Glenna Palacios, who is the previous director of the CNMI Bureau of Military Affairs, was instrumental when they started the program last year.

He said they initially did the veterinary mission last year, then they decided to expand this year to a full medical project, including Tinian and Rota.

LaVorgna said when Palacios departed, her successor, Daniel Aquino, took up the baton and just ran with it. He said they had some good continuity through the CBMA.

“And by all accounts, everybody is real happy with seeing this project going forward, including the governor, who we spoke with the other day, as well as the lieutenant governor, with whom we spoke with about an hour ago,” he said.

LaVorgna said he believes next year is going to get even better so they’re looking forward to returning.

“From the standpoint of the military participating, their level of satisfaction is as high as I’ve ever seen. They have been thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to come here to work with the community and kind of do the real-world hands-on training that they’re getting out of this,” LaVorgna said.

He said the IRT CNMI Wellness Mission was first held last summer a year ago. LaVorgna said he and Palacios started communicating in October, November 2021.

He said it was a very small project in the initial stages and in fact they only had one veterinarian actually set aside for the first mission last year.

“Now we’ve got 126 for a full medical mission,” LaVorgna said.

Koklanaris said they actually have two missions that are going on simultaneously in the CNMI under the IRT Program.

This past week’s mission was just for the medical side as they already have a substantial construction and engineering mission on Tinian, Koklanaris said, adding that the Tinian mission was run primarily under his office through the Navy and the Seabees themselves.

Koklanaris said they have a fairly substantial construction and engineering mission on Tinian, which is under the auspices of Lt. Commander Shaun Shillady of the Navy Reserve Forces Command in Virginia.

Shillady said the members they have on Tinian have been running the project that was originally started by the Air National Guard back in the fiscal year 2019 time frame.

“We’ve taken over. Obviously there’s been some setbacks due to COVID and some of the things that were going on. But the project is progressing very well at this point,” he said.

Shillady said it’s a seven-road project with a total of about seven miles that they’re going over the course of the next few years.

“So each year, we tend to work it in phases, and move forward. …One road is completely finished and two that are almost finished,” he said.