MEDCoE

Photos of Army Medicine and MEDCoE through history

The Medical Center of Excellence traces its history to the establishment of the Medical Field Service School (MFSS) at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Authorized in May 1920 and reporting directly to the Surgeon General’s Office, the school opened its first class in May 1921 training Medical Department personnel with the skills they would need to support the Army at war. The school included five teaching departments: Administration; Hygiene; Enlisted Training; Equipment and Transportation; and Military Art. Also included in the school’s structure was the Medical Department Equipment Laboratory, established to develop and test new equipment for use in field units, and a printing section which would produce printed materials not only for the school but for distribution throughout the Medical Department. These printed materials included the Bulletin of the Army Medical Department, one of the principal means of disseminating command information within the AMEDD.

The MFSS continued to operate at Carlisle Barracks through World War II, but the facilities there were too limited to support the needs of the Medical Department as it expanded to support the war and additional training sites were established throughout the United States. As the war was ending The Surgeon General began searching for a new location for the school which would have room to expand in the event of another major conflict. The Surgeon General received permission to relocate the school to Fort Sam Houston, Texas where it moved in February 1946. Two other schools, the School of Military Neuropsychiatry and the Army School of Roentgenology, also relocated to Fort Sam Houston and the three were collectively renamed the Army Medical Department Schools.

The Army Medical Department Schools, along with the Army Service Forces Training Center (Medical) and the Medical Department Enlisted Technicians School were placed under the command of the Brooke Hospital Center which was redesignated Brooke Army Medical Center. A further reorganization in 1947 consolidated all training activities and returned to the name Medical Field Service School.

The next significant reorganization and redesignation took place in December 1972 when the MFSS was redesignated the Academy of Health Sciences (AHS). This was part of the much larger Army reorganization that established U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), U.S. Army Forces Command, and the Health Services Command (HSC). The AHS added functions previously performed by the MFSS as well as the U.S. Army Medical Training Center, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing, the U.S. Army Veterinarian School, and the training mission of the Medical Optical and Maintenance Agency. The following April the AHS was transferred to HSC when that command activated. In July 1991 the school redesignated once again, this time becoming the Army Medical Department Center and School (AMEDD C&S) and it took on the mission of garrison command from 1995 until 2002. It remained subordinate to HSC and in 1994, U.S. Army Medical Command when HSC was redesignated. In September 2019 the AMEDD C&S redesignated again as the U.S. Army Medical Center of Excellence (MEDCoE) and on 2 October 2019 was reassigned under TRADOC. For over a century this institution has grown and evolved to meet the changing needs of the Army Medical Department but its core function of preparing the next generation of leaders and soldiers so they are ready to deliver lifesaving health care to the Army on the battlefield remains the same.

Source: Lewis Barger, MEDCoE Historian