Guest Post by RDML James Watson (CG-54), Director of Prevention Policy
A little over a year ago the Coast Guard stood up the National Maritime Center (NMC) to centralize its mariner documentation process to improve customer service. The NMC has achieved notable progress toward this end, including: (Source: 2008 MLD Program Performance.pdf)
- Increasing the number of credentials issued by 135%
- Decreasing the average inventory age of applications by 49%
- Reducing cycle time to conduct professional qualification and safety and security evaluations.
- Achieving compliance with ISO 9001.
Despite the mostly positive trends, we have identified a shortfall that is creating a processing backlog and hindering the NMC from serving the merchant mariner as effectively as we would like. Delays are being caused by an increase in the number of physical exams and insufficient medical screening personnel. The medical screening requirement is directly linked to marine safety and based on recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board.
Measures are being taken to permanently expand the capacity of the medical evaluations branch to prevent the current bottleneck from reoccurring. New full time medical staff positions have been established and solicitations for medical professionals to fill them will be published soon. We expect these new employees to be on board at NMC later this year. Additionally, improvements to the credentialing database have been identified and plans are being prepared to improve the efficiency and quality of screening and evaluation through an electronic workflow system.
In the meantime, the Coast Guard is taking immediate actions to clear the existing backlog, these include.
- Prioritizing renewals to keep working mariners employed. 2,225 credentials have been produced and mailed out since last week. We will return to the first-in-first-out prioritization as soon as the capacity improvements reduce delays enough to prevent credential from expiring.
- Surging Coast Guard active duty, reserve, and Auxiliary medical professionals, as well as Public Health Service and contracted medical personnel to the NMC medical branch to assist. These personnel must be trained to evaluate merchant mariner medical records, so we expect this surge to be at full capacity in about two weeks.
- Conducting aggressive outreach to the maritime public via the call center, NMC website, list server, and over the counter at the RECs. About 40% of medical review delays are due to incomplete documentation or a need for more information about a particular medical condition.
We regret the work disruptions that may have resulted from the current bottleneck in the medical evaluation portion of the credentialing process. Fortunately, we have seen cycle time improvements elsewhere in processing mariner credentials. The NMC processed 36,000 credentials in the last six months, of those, more than half met the NMC's goal of reducing processing time to thirty days. We expect to see our overall cycle time statistics reach a new higher performance plateau when these medical enhancements kick in at full capacity.
Looking forward, the Coast Guard and the NMC are committed to continuing improvement in our marine safety mission and service to the commercial mariner. It is our vision that the NMC will become a model of e-government, leveraging technology to better serve the public.
