This article was first published in the Summer 2021 issue of Critical Connections.
 
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, military medicine has been called on to support medical personnel when the high disease burden exceeded the hospital or medical system’s capacity. The traditional military deployment plan is based on trauma response with a stepwise increase in capabilities at higher
levels, referred to as echelons. Echelons 3 and above provide care at the level of the intensive care unit (ICU). The initial military response in March and April 2020 used these large echelon 3 level teams such as the hospital ships USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort in Los Angeles and New York as well as a large Army alternative care facility at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York. This article describes our experience with the transition to the smaller embedded care response teams.
 
Critical Connections, the critical care industry's only newsmagazine, provides information on cutting-edge topics in critical care useful to the entire multiprofessional team.Commander Michael J. Kavanaugh, MD
Captain Sean A. McKay, MD
Commander Joseph Zeman, MD