Olmsted Series | Overseas Medical Screening

O-V-E-R-S-E-A-S   M-E-D-I-C-A-L   S-C-R-E-E-N-I-N-G

is a pain in the ass. Well to me it is, I’m sure others may have had a much smoother process, but we’ve been getting a bit of a runaround. Before I jump into sharing some of my tips for your overseas move, I’m just going to share the hell of a week we’ve had in trying to get our medical signed off. Let me just tell you, we have yet to get anything signed off and we started on Monday.

On Monday, we both had appointments scheduled with our PCM (primary care manager) at the air force base nearby. Since A is here for language school, we’re not exactly attached anywhere. Therefore, I have a doctor in the air force. Before going into our appointment, I probably should have made a point to do some research on what paperwork I might need. We went into our appointment with nothing in hand. As soon as A was called in, he came back out like 15 minutes later and that didn’t seem right to me.

You’re done already?

No … we have to go to a Navy hospital to get our screening done. They can’t do it here.

Any normal reaction, I wasn’t exactly happy with this. I have no idea why they couldn’t see us, but she still took me in anyways and wrote up a little report. Medically, I’ve already had my annual check-up and well woman’s exam not too long after we moved here. Once we left our appointment, we called the navy hospital to schedule medical screening 2.0 and thankfully we were able to get one set for the next day.

After A was done with school, I swooped him up and we made our way to Walter Reed to hopefully get our screening squared away. Let me tell you guys, Walter Reed is ginormous … well, it is to me. They have a neat navigation system inside the hospital, which made it easier to find where we needed to go. When we were scheduling our appointment, the guy (apparently he’s in charge of medical screenings) let us know what forms we needed to fill out and that you could print them off online.

Welp, we arrive and check-in. So far, so good. And then the receptionist drops a bomb on us (sorta).

Your spouse can’t get her screening done here, she needs to see her PCM.

I’m just feeling all kinds of delightful at this point. After sitting, waiting, and slightly seething, we get called in. Thankfully, the guy explained the whole process to us and answered all of our questions. It wasn’t that much of a mess once he cleared things up for us, but I still have to go all the way back to my PCM to have her sign my clearance forms. The guy handles all of A’s medical screening. A managed to get part of his screening done but has to go back next week to finish the last half.

Originally I was going to talk about getting your dental screening done on this post, but that can easily be its’ own post.

So, did we check anything off of our list for medical screening? Nope. Absolutely nothing.

Tomorrow, I’m planning on calling my clinic to see if I can just come in to get my papers signed off or if I have to make another appointment.

After all of that hullabaloo, here are some tips to tackle your overseas medical screening:

• Get the paperwork before you schedule your appointment. Definitely our big mistake, it didn’t set us back that much because they can easily give you the forms. I’m not sure if the paperwork is the same for all branches, but here’s the forms we needed for the Navy:
  • DD2807-1 It’s your medical history report and needs to be completed before your appointment (Active Duty Member + Dependants)
  • NAVMED 1300/1 (Active Duty Member + Dependants)
  • NAVMED 1300/2 This is a medical, dental, and educational suitability checklist, but it needs to be signed off at the appointment (Active Duty Member)
  • NAVPERS 1300/16 (Active Duty Member)

The forms can easily be found online, Google does wonders!

• Make sure you’re caught up on everything, which can easily be done in advance. Like your well-woman’s exam and immunizations.
• Stay calm. It can be pretty stressful and it has been a little bit for us. There’s so much paperwork and things that need to be crossed off.
• Don’t procrastinate! The screening itself doesn’t really take that long, it’s getting the clearance you need to move that takes a while. Once they’re cleared, you can get your orders … hopefully. We all know how that story goes.
• Don’t be like us and go in empty-handed. Do a little research before and grab those forms! We’re idiots, lesson learned.

I know this post can’t speak with everyone since we’ve all had different experiences, but this has been our experience so far. I’m so glad that I decided to get caught up on my medical as soon as we moved here. It makes things a little smoother since I don’t have to wait for appointments to happen.

Next week, I’ll be talking about the dental part of the screening, which is page 3 of the NAVMED 1300/1. We’ve heard cases where dependants didn’t have to get a dental screening and I was hoping strongly for that. Why? Because I didn’t want to find and schedule a dental appointment during our short stay, but sadly, I had to. More on that on Monday!

Feel free to share your experiences or ask any questions about the process so far!

Over the next few months, here is what I’ll be covering:

1. Brief Intro to the Olmsted Foundation
2. Overseas Medical Screening
3. Dental Screening
4. Dog Health Screening
5. Passports / Visas / IDs
6. Familiarization Trip
7. Overseas Household Goods Move
8. Traveling with Pets