"Supervising Surgeon General," which later became the surgeon general. Woodworth is credited with the formal creation of the commissioned corps. Woodworth organized the Marine Hospital Service medical personnel along Army military structure in 1889 to facilitate a mobile force of health professionals that could be moved for the needs of the service and country. He established appointment standards and designed the Marine Hospital Service herald of a fouled anchor and caduceus. Later that year of 1889, President Grover Cleveland signed an Act into law that formally established the modern Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (then the Marine Hospital Service under the Supervising Surgeon (later Surgeon General)). At first open only to physicians, over the course of the twentieth century, the Corps expanded to 11 careers in a wide range of specialties to include veterinarians, dentists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, engineers, pharmacists, nurses, environmental health specialists, scientists, dietitians, and other allied health professionals. Today, the commissioned corps is under the United States Public Health Service (PHS), a major agency now of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), established by Congress in 1979–1980. It was previously established in 1953 as the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), and is still led by the surgeon general. The commissioned corps allocates officers to all of the other uniformed services depending on the health or medical needs of each service. By the 1980s, the wearing of uniforms on a day-to-day basis was not consistently practiced. In 1987, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop advocated for consistent use of the uniform while on duty, although he allowed individual agencies to determine their own requirements. In 2004, Surgeon General Richard Carmona made uniforms compulsory whenever officers were on duty. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act established a Ready Reserve Corps for the PHSCC, but technical errors in the legislation prevented it from being implemented until the errors were corrected in the 2020 CARES Act. According to , service in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps after June 30, 1960, is considered military service for retirement purposes. Under , active service in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is considered active military service for the purposes of most veterans' benefits and for antidiscrimination laws. Purpose The stated mission of the commissioned corps of the U.S. Public Health Service is "Protecting, promoting, and advancing the health and safety of the Nation"