42 U.S.C. § 204a — Deployment readiness

(a) Readiness requirements for Commissioned Corps officers (1) The Secretary must set readiness requirements — including training and medical exams — for members of the active-duty Regular Corps and the Ready Reserve Corps. The goal is making sure these members are ready to respond to urgent or emergency public health needs that state, local, and other federal resources can't handle alone. (2) Each year, the Secretary must check whether every Corps member meets these readiness requirements. (3) A member who fails to meet or keep up these readiness requirements, or who disobeys an order to respond to an urgent public health need, faces discipline set by the Secretary — unless a waiver applies under paragraph (4). (4) The Secretary can waive one or more readiness requirements for a member who can't meet them because of a disability, a temporary medical condition, or another extraordinary limit the Secretary recognizes. The Secretary must write regulations explaining how such waivers can be granted. (5) For this section (and for section 215 of this title), "urgent or emergency public health care need" means a health need the Secretary identifies, arising from: a national emergency the President declares under the National Emergencies Act; an emergency or major disaster the President declares under the Stafford Act; a public health emergency the Secretary declares under section 247d of this title; or any other emergency the Secretary judges appropriate for deploying Corps members. (b) Corps management for deployment The Secretary must: organize Corps members into units that can deploy quickly to respond to urgent public health needs; set up procedures for commanding and controlling deployed units or individual Corps members when the President or Secretary sends them to respond to a national, state, or local public health need; make sure Corps members are trained, equipped, and otherwise ready for their public health and emergency roles; and make sure deployment planning accounts for any deployment exemptions the Secretary grants based on an agency's special needs or a person's role there, as well as the nature of the public health need itself. (c) Deployment of detailed or assigned officers If a Commissioned Corps officer is on loan (detailed or assigned) to a federal agency and the Secretary deploys that officer to respond to an urgent public health need, that deployment counts — for purposes of the officer's pay, allowances, and benefits — as an authorized activity of the agency the officer is loaned to.