AMedP-8.2 basic military medical report

What it is

What AMedP-8.2 covers

AMedP-8.2 is a short NATO Allied Medical Publication with one job: standardizing the minimum information a Basic military medical report has to contain, its own aim being "to standardize the minimum information to be included in a Basic military medical report when patients from one nation are treated in hospitals of other nations and how to handle this information when patients are transferred from one MTF to another military or civilian hospital." It does not set clinical standards of care. It sets what a report must record so that information is "correct and standardized between nations in a NATO operation," and stays usable as a patient moves between allied medical treatment facilities and eventually back to their own nation.

A report is required for both in-patient and out-patient treatment, whenever a patient from one participating nation is treated in a military hospital of another. It is written by the attending physician, authenticated by an officer's name, rank, position and signature, and travels with the patient on every further transfer between military medical installations, or on to a civilian hospital, or back to their parent nation.

How it comes to bind

Participating nations "agree to the details herein," and that agreement is what gives the document force between them; the cover carrying it is STANAG 2348. For a military medical treatment facility, the practical trigger is clinical rather than contractual: a patient of another participating nation arrives for treatment, and the reporting practice needs to already be running by then. AMedP-8.2 itself does not say what happens if a facility does not have one running; it simply fixes what the report contains once one is prepared.

What the report has to contain

The document groups the minimum content into broad categories rather than a single free-text narrative: information identifying the patient, information about the medical treatment facility that prepared the record, clinical information about the treatment given, and authentication of who wrote and signed it. This page does not reproduce the individual items under each heading; a compliance summary is the wrong place for a patient's clinical record. It does say plainly that "all personal information therein will be treated like all other medical information with respect to confidentiality," and it also asks for a brief independent summary of the medical history and treatment, written in English or French, to travel ahead of the full record to the next level of treatment. Where a Field Medical Card or Patient Evacuation Tag has also been prepared, that accompanies the report rather than replacing it. A report can be issued electronically, on paper, or both.

The record is forwarded to the patient's own national military medical authority once treatment is completed, the patient is discharged or dies, or the record meets the criteria for retirement. Annex A lists each nation's authority for this purpose, and the document allows that list to be corrected administratively: changes to it "may be performed as editorial changes as appropriate, without any need for a new ratification process," on the basis that "each nation has the responsibility for providing the correct data to the Custodian Nation," which forwards it on for the record to be kept current. That administrative route covers only the Annex A list, not the substance of what a report must contain.

Where it points beyond itself

The document names STANAG 2132 as covering the procedures for transferring the information it discusses between facilities: AMedP-8.2 fixes what a report contains, STANAG 2132 governs how it moves. It does not describe any certification, audit or inspection mechanism of its own; the only formal mechanism it names is a nation's own recorded reservation against specific report content, and the administrative correction of Annex A described above.

Standards it references

• STANAG 2132Background