FAA Medical to Improve Response Time?

[JimBirk]

This AOPA Live report with Mark Baker sounds very encouraging to me, but I'm new to the FAA Medical party. Could a 60 day turnaround for FAA Medical applications actually happen within FAA Medical Division's current budget?

Also, it appears that Dr. Northrup supports BasicMed. That's encouraging.

Description:
The new Federal Air Surgeon [Dr. Susan A. Northrup] tells AOPA President Mark Baker that she wants to improve response from the Office of Aerospace Medicine and respond to medical applications within 60 days. Baker had a virtual meeting with the new top doc at FAA.

 

[Tarheelpilot]

Thats cool. Doubt she gets it done.

 

[DaleB]

The new Federal Air Surgeon [Dr. Susan A. Northrup] tells AOPA President Mark Baker that she wants to improve response from the Office of Aerospace Medicine and respond to medical applications within 60 days. Baker had a virtual meeting with the new top doc at FAA.

We all want things. Not all are going to happen... but I wish her success.

 

[gkainz]

Improved response - create an autoresponder that sends an automatic NO, DISAPPROVED to every correspondence.

 

[Initial Fix]

I read the same article and was also thinking she has an uphill challenge. I think her background and willingness to battle some of the special issuance decisions we’ve read about in this medical sub-forum will save many aspiring aviators from needless expenses. Time will tell.

 

[DFH65]

I have never met her but know of her and her family through some round about circumstances. They are definitely a family tied into GA. I am pretty confident she will have the best intentions. I really hope she gets some things accomplished.

 

[JimBirk]

I read the same article and was also thinking she has an uphill challenge. I think her background and willingness to battle some of the special issuance decisions we’ve read about in this medical sub-forum will save many aspiring aviators from needless expenses. Time will tell.

Agreed!

The big improvement, IMHO, would be reducing the amount of time it takes to get a Special Issuance medical processed by FAA Medical. I mean, when a pilot completes all of the medical exams required for the SI, and the treating doctors tell you that you passed all of the tests, it's painful to have to wait many months for the FAA to approve the SI.

I'm very happy that Dr. Northrup has acknowledged (using her "out loud" voice ) that the processing speed needs to improve. And, as you mentioned @Initial Fix, "time will tell."

 

[4CornerFlyer]

Bruce or those more familiar with the operation there would know better, but I believe a substantial portion of the delay is at the front end, getting the mail scanned in. I would think a motivated administrator could solve this problem by making them accept documents by internet upload, like the rest of the world does.

Jon

 

[Daleandee]

I thought it was verboten to use FAA and improve in the same sentence ... ?

 

[bbchien]

It’ll never happen in a sustained manner. The culture is incorrect. And you can’t stuff 1000 items in an inbox and expect the employee to not be pi—ed off, and ding him for lack of throughput, and you HAVE to approve overtime if needed.

At the bottom of this all are “Stosh” and “Josh” and this will not change. They mean well but authorized overtime is hard to come by....and then there is the the forever tendency to keep adding “defensive” processes.....

It’s just like making the ATO more efficient. Not gonna happen.

Heck it’s been 8 years sine “surge Tuesday” took our on call medical officer away. That’s NEVER coming back......

 

[JimBirk]

It’ll never happen in a sustained manner. The culture is incorrect. And you can’t stuff 1000 items in an inbox and expect the employee to not be pi—ed off, and ding him for lack of throughput, and you HAVE to approve overtime if needed.

Thanks for the reality check Dr. Bruce. Heavy sigh.

 

[hindsight2020]

Improved response - create an autoresponder that sends an automatic NO, DISAPPROVED to every correspondence.

#oof. Very underrated comment.

 

[WDD]

Just to be clear - this all applies to a medical that has to be deferred. Most people with no problems get their medical handed to them by the AME doctor before they walk out of the doctors office.

 

[JimBirk]

Just to be clear - this all applies to a medical that has to be deferred. Most people with no problems get their medical handed to them by the AME doctor before they walk out of the doctors office.

Good clarification, WDD.