Name
#14 Sustainment of Walk-in Contraception Services (WiCS) in a Military Health System (MHS) leveraging clinician expertise within the dynamic sustainability framework (DSF)
Content Presented On Behalf Of:
DHA
Session Type
Poster
Date
Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Start Time
5:00 PM
End Time
7:00 PM
Location
Prince Georges Expo Hall E
Focus Areas/Topics
Policy/Management/Administrative
Learning Outcomes
The participant will be able to…
1. Describe WiCS as a program that implemented standard contraceptive services across the MHS.
2. Summarize an implementation assessment meant to help inform future implementation strategy.
3. Share actions considered and executed to remediate potential challenges observed from the post-implementation assessment through the lens of the SDF.
Session Currently Live
Description
Introduction. Since January 2023 the Defense Health Agency (DHA) Women’s Health Collaborative (WHC) has maintained WiCS at 129 Military Treatment Facilities (MTFs) across the MHS in accordance with the Health Affairs (HA) memo XYZ and DHA-Administrative Instruction 6025.09. WiCS provides same-day, no appointment, no referral, full-scope contraception services, including prescribing short-acting reversible contraception (SARC), long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) procedures, emergency contraception (EC), and reproductive health education. This presentation shares how the DSF provides a framework to understand how WiCS clinicians developed innovative sustainment practices that resulted in high long-term compliance and sustained WiCS utilization. Methods. The DSF posits that an intervention such as a new policy is sustained through contextual (practice setting, staffing, organizational culture) and ecological (policy, regulations, population characteristics) inputs that are constantly changing. Part of the original implementation plan entailed reviewing compliance and outcome data on a monthly basis for approximately 6 months with WiCS clinicians, and quarterly thereafter at specific metrics meetings. A decrease in compliance was noted in March of 2024 and a process improvement survey sent out to WiCS clinicians in May 2024 asking about struggles with aspects of compliance. Approximately 35% of WiCS providers responded and identified workflow, templating of appointments, and advertising and marketing of WiCS as the top three issues impacting sustainment coupled with frequent changes in staffing. An intervention consisting of a WiCS-themed meeting featuring lessons learned from other successful WiCS addressing the identified concerns was done in August 2024. Results. Clinicians with successful WiCS (identified by both consistent volume and the WiCS clinicians themselves) shared lessons learned with other clinicians born out of complex issues not identified in the original implementation plan with staffing, workflow, and advertising the WiCS. Novel adaptations from successful WiCS included workflows that involved new ways to classify WiCS appointments, group education with licensed pharmacists, tiered systems to identify patients who desired SARCs vs. LARCs, and outreach and marketing strategies that targeted command leadership to discover the optimal day or days for the WiCS. Clinicians who presented at the WiCS-themed meeting developed several guides with detailed step-by-step instructions on how to optimize workflow for staffing at both large and small-volume MTFs. Examples of posters and content of emails to send to commanders was also disseminated widely. Over the next year outcome and compliance measures improved with an XX % increase in total compliance and sustainment of total patients seen. Conclusions. Using the methodology of the SDF allowed the WHC to pivot from a meeting intended to be a reiteration of already established sustainment practices, to a space for leveraging clinician ingenuity in the face of changing issues such as budgetary constraints, changes to staffing mix, mandates for higher clinician productivity, and communication strategies that moved beyond the MTF to the command infrastructure. The intervention of a survey and meeting to share how colleagues had overcome challenges positively impacted total WiCS compliance and helped to ensure sustained numbers of WiCS visits across the enterprise.