Dominating the DoDMERB
The DoDMERB, or Department of Defense Medical Review Board (which is a mouth-full so I will always refer to it by its acronym), is one of the single most daunting tasks ROTC and Service Academy Applicants face on their journey to become officers in the military. Luckily, I’m here to break it down for you.
The most important piece of advice that I can give to you when completing the DoDMERB is be proactive. The moment that you are able to start working on your DoDMERB, start because it is a long process with many bumps along the road that make the exhaustive process even longer. The entire process took me about four months, including the different initial exams and the follow up examinations.
Your information is entered into the DoDMERB system as soon as one of the institutions or programs that you are applying to requests your medical status. In my case, I was lucky because I applied to three of the Academies and two ROTC programs. You only have to complete the DoDMERB once, but the ROTC programs do not request your medical status until you are accepted into the program contingent on the results of your medical evaluation, but the Academies are different. They will request your medical status once you have completed a certain percentage of the application. This is why, among other reasons, if you only really want to attend an ROTC program you should still apply to at least one of the academies. In my case it was the US Air Force Academy that requested my DoDMERB first, in October. If I waited for the AFROTC program to request my DoDMERB, I would have started in March of the following year.
So now let’s get down to business: what medical stuff needs to be done in your DoDMERB? Well, it all depends on your initial survey that you fill out online. In the survey, you will tell them about any medical problems that you currently have, or have had in the past. You have to be honest in this survey because it is better that they find out now than while you are in the program because that will only open up the flood gates of military wrath on your shoulders. So trust me when I tell you to be honest. In my case, I reported previous fainting spells that I had a few years before I applied as well as a minor heart murmur.
Once you fill out the survey, they will let you know that you have to complete your IME (Initial Medical Evaluation) which involves a physical and an eye examination. There are options in how to get your IME done. You can either accept the doctor that the military sends you to for free, or you can pay for your own physician to do the evaluation. Obviously, I recommend the free one because, well, it’s free and it doesn’t cost you a dime besides the gas money to get to the doctor’s office. The military contracts with a heath care provider called Concorde and that is where you will get your physical done. I chose the free option because I did not want to spend my money on this examination if I didn’t have to. Once you select your option, they find a “local” Concorde office for you to visit. They will let you know where it is and give you their phone number, but you are responsible for calling and making the appointment and here is where you have to be proactive, because you are responsible for setting up the appointment and sometimes it can be a while before they can give you an appointment. Now you may be wondering why I put local in quotation marks back there. Well, the reason was that local really means within a two hour drive. I was sent to an office in Los Angeles when I live quite a bit south from there and if you know anything about Southern California traffic into Los Angeles, you would understand my struggle.
Once you make it to the office, expect to wait around 45 minutes for your appointment while you fill out paper work that does have to be signed by your legal guardian if you are under the age of 18. As part of the exam, they measure your sitting height, standing height, weight, hearing, and other medical metrics, but there was one exam that was really uncomfortable. Yes, the government does want to see your butt and its status. So be prepared to have a random doctor looking up your rear. I warned you.
The next step will be your eye IME where you follow the same steps as you did for the physical IME. You schedule your own appointment with either their doctor for free or your own eye doctor. Luckily for me, this appointment fell much further into the “local” category at about a 20–30 minute drive. There are more papers for your legal guardian to sign and then the doctor checks to make sure you aren’t blind and the like.
Remember that survey that you filled out in the beginning, well, here it comes again to haunt you. If you checked any of the boxes for previous or current conditions, they want you to get checked out for each of those. These are now called AMI’s (Additional Medical Information). There are two types of these: Medical AMI’s and Administrative AMI’s. The administrative one’s are the easiest and they usually only require a note from your physician and any treatment that you received for the issue. Again, be proactive as you are responsible for getting this information from your doctor. The Medical AMI’s are a lot like the IME because you can either take the free doctor from the military or use your own physician or specialist. Again, I chose the free one and their definition of “local” was again lax. My Medical AMI was for the heart murmur and the military wanted an echocardiogram to make sure that my heart wasn’t going to give out while I was in service. So I was directed to another doctor in LA, another long drive, but the appointment was quick and I ate some great LA food afterwards.
Once everything that they need is in, it is only a matter of waiting for a response. I got my response about a month after all of my paper work was submitted and I was medically qualified for all of the programs requesting my DoDMERB results.
The DoDMERB was a crazy process and I would go as far as to say that it is the first test before you are even in the military to make sure that you have the discipline and stamina to be proactive and complete the required examinations. The best way to get through this ordeal is to stay on top of it and constantly be proactive and get it all done as quickly as you can.
Good Luck,
Matt Sandoval (Military Matt)
