TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. —
Approximately 550 Team Travis members participated in Exercise Ultimate Caduceus 2024 (UC24) at Travis Air Force Base, California, June 10-21. UC24 is an annual U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) led patient movement field training exercise held at multiple locations throughout the Indo-Pacific and within the United States.
Ultimate Caduceus assessed USTRANSCOM’s ability and capacity to conduct global patient movement (GPM) on a large scale and in a field training environment, as well as examined patient movement functionality across the DoD and with interagency partners.
“We are super grateful to be a part of Ultimate Caduceus 24, knowing what an incredible planning event it has been over several months,” said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Derek Salmi, 60th Air Mobility Wing commander. “We are so grateful for the reps and sets that it has given our team to integrate in the broader patient management and patient distribution system.”
Participants simulated receiving injured troops from overseas locations at designated Aeromedical Evacuation (AE) hubs and Patient Reception Areas (PRA) where Federal Coordinating Centers (FCCs) and local partners received, triaged, staged, tracked and transported patients to pre-designated local definitive care facilities.
“This exercise prepared Medic Airmen to treat and render aid to injured personnel, ensuring continuous care from the point of injury in a contested environment, all the way to definitive medical treatment stateside,” said Maj. Melvin Tsui, 60th Medical Group medical incident commander. “This exercise was critical in ensuring we can interoperate with multiple agencies within the patient movement system. Each component is essential, and the exercising of those communication lines is vital to ensuring this system works in a large-scale overseas conflict.
More than 1,000 joint and total force military and civilian personnel participated in this year’s iteration, demonstrating a collective commitment to patient care. This included representatives from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Defense Health Agency.
“What was unique about this UC is it started in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Guam [and continued with] Travis, Denver, Reno, Washington D.C. and Pearl Harbor, Hickam,” said U.S. Air Force Col. Christopher Backus, USTRANSCOM command surgeon. “This has been a bigger UC than most, and I feel like this has paved some new ground. We’ve definitely made steps forward on items that we want, and we are looking forward to making further steps.”
UC24 allowed global military patient movement stakeholders to train with a unity of effort and an understanding of each other’s roles to provide safe, reliable and scalable global patient movement for the DoD.
As the DoD’s single manager for global patient movement, USTRANSCOM provides the world’s only long-range, large-capacity aeromedical evacuation capability, enabling en route health care management to patients from locations across the globe to their point of definitive medical care.
