The Air Reserve Personnel Center will move the medical and dental records of some reservists to the active-duty base where they serve as part of a test to streamline operations.

The process, initiated two years ago, will help reduce duplicate copies of the records. This will decrease work and increase efficiency, officials said.

“This is a win-win situation,” said Staff Sgt. Mike Melanson, of the center’s health services directorate. “The member has medical records at the military treatment facility to which they are assigned and (personnel officials) will have a complete medical history.”

The change will help individual mobilization augmentees. Historically, those individual’s records have been maintained at the personnel center.

With no medical or dental information available at base health care facilities, just getting an annual Reserve Component Periodic Health Assessment was difficult, the sergeant said.

So officials devised a plan to solve the problem, which they plan to complete by December 2006.

Osan Air Base, South Korea; Buckley Air Force Base, Colo.; and Peterson AFB, Colo., will be the test bases. Remaining bases will start getting records in March 2006.

“Keeping medical records where the person is just makes sense,” said Tech. Sgt. Lennie Williams, who also works in the directorate. “It is another step in the direction of the total force concept.”

The decentralization supports the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs requirement that outpatient medical records be available at the point of service.

“The decentralization will free up valuable manpower which can then be shifted to concentrate on other day-to-day processes,” said the center’s David Fisher.