Walter Reed hearings today

[thedrifter]

Walter Reed hearings today

By John Heilprin - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Mar 5, 2007 6:38:52 EST

As several House committees prepared to delve into the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, outraged lawmakers vowed quick action and called for an independent commission to examine poor conditions for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s national security panel, headed by Rep. John Tierney, D-N.Y., scheduled a hearing at the hospital’s auditorium Monday morning. The list of Army officials, hospital staff and patients invited to speak includes the medical center’s previous commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman.

The defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee also scheduled a hearing on Walter Reed for Monday.

In a letter Sunday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked for an independent commission, possibly headed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, to investigate all post-combat medical facilities and recommend changes.

“To think that men and women are serving their country in the most honorable and courageous way possible and all we give them is a dilapidated, rat-infested, run-down building to recover is a disgrace,” Schumer wrote. “My fear is that Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg, and merely highlights the pervasive and systemic mistreatment of our service members.”

President Bush last week ordered a comprehensive review of conditions at the nation’s network of military and veteran hospitals. They have been overwhelmed by injured troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House said the president would name a bipartisan commission to assess whether the problems at Walter Reed exist at other facilities. Last week, Gates created an outside panel to review the situation at Walter Reed and the other major military hospital in the Washington area, the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md.

Gates also dismissed Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, who had fired Weightman and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army’s surgeon general and a former commander of Walter Reed. Gates said Harvey’s response was not aggressive enough.

The Army announced that Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker will be the new commander of Walter Reed. In addition, the Army took disciplinary action against several lower-level soldiers at Walter Reed.

The moves came in response to a series of reports about substandard conditions and bureaucratic problems affecting the care of injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to Walter Reed, one of the military’s highest-profile and busiest medical facilities, and its outpatient facilities

Ellie

[thedrifter]

'It Is Just Not Walter Reed' <br />
Soldiers Share Troubling Stories Of Military Health Care Across U.S. <br />
<br />
By Anne Hull and Dana Priest <br />
Washington Post Staff Writers <br />
Monday, March 5, 2007; A01 <br />
<br />
Ray...

[thedrifter]

Soldiers at Walter Reed Building 18 moved

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Mar 5, 2007 11:40:18 EST

The soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center's Building 18 moved to Building 14 Sunday, a soldier in the Medical Hold Unit told Military Times

At the recently remodeled building, there wasn't a rodent to be seen. But there were plenty of mice — the kind attached to computers.

At their new digs, the soldiers found new Apple computers, Internet access and a 32-inch HDTV.

"It's great," the soldier said, still speaking on the condition of anonymity after last week's order not to speak to the press. The Building 18 soldiers had a separate formation from the rest of the Medical Hold Unit where they were ordered to go through their chain of command if they had problems and to tell reporters to talk to public affairs personnel — and not to soldiers, the soldier said.

And the command sergeant major who informed the soldiers in Building 18 that they couldn't speak to the media and that they would have 7 a.m. room inspections? The soldier said he has been relieved of command — along with the unit's commander and first sergeant. The Army still hasn't confirmed the reassignment of the unit's platoon sergeants or other changes in command, beyond the firing of Maj. Gen. George Weightman

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House committee chairman fears Walter Reed not isolated case <br />
<br />
Ex-patients, spouses speak out on vet care during hearing <br />
By John Heilprin - The Associated Press <br />
Posted : Monday Mar 5, 2007...

[thedrifter]

Committee chairman fears Walter Reed not isolated case <br />
<br />
Ex-patients, spouses speak out on vet care during hearing <br />
By John Heilprin - The Associated Press <br />
Posted : Monday Mar 5, 2007 16:51:46 EST...

[thedrifter]

Finding: Wounded Care Scandal Goes Far Beyond Walter Reed Hospital
By Linda Robinson

Mar 5, 2007
(US News) In contentious hearings held today at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, members of Congress reacted with dismay to stories from wounded soldiers and one wife about the excruciating red tape, delayed medical attention for outpatients, and terrible living conditions they have been subjected to. Legislators then peppered the two previous commanders of the medical facility, Maj. Gen. George Weightman and Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, with questions about why they had not spotted and corrected those problems.

"The bottom line is our system of care for our wounded soldiers is inefficient and insufficient," committee member Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, told U.S. News after the hearing. "The complicated bureaucracy hampers the quality of care, access to what patients need when they need it, and the speed of treatment."

Noting that Congress received testimony on many of the same problems two years ago, Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, asked, "What will transform this dysfunctional, uncaring arrangement into the compassionate, effective medical and military operation wounded soldiers deserve?"

Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, cited a March 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office, congress's investigative arm, which he said found that "a quarter of the active-duty soldiers and more than half of reservists and guardsmen do not get their cases adjudicated according to Pentagon guidelines."

Other problems cited: The 2007 defense bill called for Physical Evaluation Board members to document their disability ratings with medical evidence rather than issuing summary judgments that soldiers had preexisting conditions, but this measure did not become law. The Army's own inspector general is currently conducting an investigation that has already turned up 87 problems with the medical evaluation system.

And the Army puts far fewer of its wounded soldiers on its permanent and temporary disability retirement lists (19 percent) than either the Navy (35 percent, including Marines) or Air Force (24 percent). "It's a massive difference," said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.). "It can't be just random."

Walter Reed is one of the military installations slated for closure and many personnel jobs have been outsourced. According to D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, that created little incentive for fixing the problems in any long-term way.

Last week heads rolled over the medical care scandal, but at today's hearings some of the wounded soldiers suggested that the wrong individuals may have been punished. Maj. Gen. George Weightman was relieved of command at Walter Reed and his predecessor, Kiley, installed as the temporary replacement.

Since Kiley's tenure at Walter Reed from 2002 to 2004 and his role as commander of the Army Medical Command is also the object of many complaints, that decision, and what Defense Secretary Gates called a failure to respond more adequately, cost Army Secretary Francis Harvey his job last Friday. In addition, a number of lower-ranking employees at Walter Reed have been relieved of duty.

Staff Sgt. Dan Shannon, one of the wounded soldiers who testified, said that he did not believe that the first sergeant of the medical holding company, who was fired after the Washington Post stories, should have been let go. "He's gone to bat for us on a daily basis," Shannon said. And the wife of Specialist Dell McLeod testified that she felt Weightman, recently appointed commander of Walter Reed, should not have been fired either. "He was just shoved into a situation that was already there, and because somebody had to be the fall guy, he was there," Annette McLeod testified.

Among those who feel that Kiley shares more of the blame for failing to fix the problems at Walter Reed during his tenure there is former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Roger PardoMaurer, who is a reservist currently serving in Iraq. He E-mailed U.S. News from Iraq with his recollections of having brought problems to Kiley's attention in 2003.

Pardo-Maurer recalls: "When I visited Walter Reed in 2003 and saw a soldier on crutches pushing a soldier in a wheelchair through the mud, because there were no handicapped ramps, I knew something was deeply wrong and brought it directly to Gen. Kiley's attention. What astounded me at the time was that he wasn't aware there was a problem with the ramps, even though it was right in front of him."

At the hearings today, Kiley said: "Simply put, I am in command. And as I share these failures, I also accept the responsibility and the challenge for rapid corrective action."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Walter Reed commanders admit fault <br />
<br />
By: ANNE FLAHERTY - Associated Press <br />
<br />
WASHINGTON -- Flayed by lawmakers' criticism, Army leaders said Monday they accept responsibility for substandard...

[thedrifter]

Military Mental Health Care Under Scrutiny <br />
<br />
by Daniel Zwerdling <br />
<br />
All Things Considered, March 6, 2007 · Army generals are scrambling to apologize for the scandal over poor medical care and...

[thedrifter]

Posted on Wed, Mar. 07, 2007

Army rules burden disabled
Hoosier has to report to Walter Reed lineup
By Sylvia A. Smith
Washington editor

WASHINGTON – Blind in one eye and nearly sightless in the other from a roadside explosion 21 months ago in Baghdad, Army Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey Mittman has to find his way to a weekly lineup so his commander can make sure he’s still at his post.

He couldn’t make the trek unless his wife, Christy, is there to lead him to the formation at a gymnasium on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Mittman said he understands why the daily or weekly formations are necessary, but it doesn’t make sense that rules made for an able-bodied military are applied to the amputees, brain-injured and vision-impaired returnees from Iraq.

The formations “make sure nobody’s missing, nobody’s hurt, nobody’s dead,” the Hoosier career soldier said Tuesday. “In the regular Army, that’s understandable. Every day you have formation. (But at Walter Reed) some of the soldiers need assistance just to get there. To account for them, we put the strain on the non-medical attendant – the wife or the mother, whatever – to bring that soldier in.”

Mittman, on leave at his home in New Palestine after yet another surgery to repair his face – this one to reconstruct his lip – said there are other ways for the military to get a daily or weekly accounting of their injured personnel.

A phone call, perhaps, or checking in as part of the weekly medical appointment.

Although the medical care at Walter Reed is top-notch, he said, the bureaucratic system hasn’t caught up with the realities of life for the 700 or so injured military personnel being cared for there.

Why, for instance, can’t he be stationed closer to his Indiana home? Mittman asked in a phone interview. The answer is that he’s still on active duty, and his duty station is Walter Reed. But Mittman said it would make more sense for him to be stationed with a Hoosier unit, returning to Walter Reed only for surgeries. That way, he said, his bed (in a hotel room on the Walter Reed grounds) would be freed up for someone who needs more regular medical treatment, and his wife wouldn’t have to spend as much time at Walter Reed, away from their two children, ages 9 and 4.

Mittman’s complaints about a military system that doesn’t take into account the realities of a severely injured soldier’s life echo the accounts documented by the Washington Post and witnesses at congressional hearings this week.

“It’s a sad metaphor for so much of what’s characterized Iraq,” Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said after listening to several hours of testimony from military leaders, “whether it’s a lack of body armor, a lack of up-armored vehicles, a lack of adequate troop strength and now a lack of adequate care for solders once they’ve come home. It’s just not right. It’s a lack of planning, a lack of competence and a lack of accountability.”

He, like other members of the Indiana delegation, said they were shocked at the Washington Post series that described neglect and substandard living conditions at a facility with a reputation as the crown jewel of the military’s medical system.

“I’m not surprised that the standard of care is below what it should be,” said Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd. “I’m shocked at how far below it is.”

Rep. Dan Burton, R-5th, said he hasn’t heard from any constituents who have complaints about operations at Walter Reed or other military or veterans hospitals. When he learned that Mittman lives in the district he represents, Burton asked for his phone number and said he would call him.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., called the Walter Reed situation “unacceptable.”

“Clearly there was very poor management, and I think that the administration and Secretary Gates have made a good first step in relieving a number of responsible individuals of their duty. Changes should continue to be made to improve the facilities and management in order to provide appropriate medical care for our servicemen and women,” he wrote Monday in letters to Hoosier constituents.

Souder said one thing that’s clear is that not enough money has been spent on military and veterans hospitals.

“We haven’t invested in enough of these facilities for a long time,” he said. “We haven’t put enough into veterans’ spending.”

Mittman said there also hasn’t been enough thought put into the now-what situation of severely wounded soldiers.

“Part of the problem,” he said, “is we’re not thinking of new ways to do things,” and one of the reasons is the work load of the administrative staff. Nobody, he said, has time to think of how to make the system accommodate to injured soldiers’ circumstances rather than forcing those physically and mentally traumatized soldiers fit into a strict military structure.

“The bureaucracy is amazing,” he said. “It’s very slow to react to issues and problems.”

Not everyone, Mittman said, has a spouse or parent who can spend months on end at Walter Reed helping the soldier fill out forms, get to medical appointments and attend the formations. And those who do, he said, also have to worry about who can care for their children at home while both parents are coping with the bureaucracy at Walter Reed. In the Mittmans’ case, grandparents help out.

Without his wife’s help, Mittman said, he wouldn’t be able to fill out the forms because he can’t read very long without magnification.

In addition to his eye injuries, Mittman lost his nose, his teeth and right index finger when his Humvee was hit by a roadside explosive devise in July 2005.

The system “doesn’t adapt to the needs of the individual patient. That gets into the point that I think they’re overloaded, so nobody’s really thought, what else can I do to alleviate” the problems created by bureaucracy.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-6th, called the conditions at Walter Reed “a national embarrassment.” But he said there’s more.

“More than filthy living conditions, the dirty secret of the military healthcare system is that our injured veterans must navigate a bureaucratic morass to get the care they deserve,” he said in a speech on the House floor.

“After they receive life-saving surgeries at military facilities, wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines must negotiate an overwhelming amount of red tape to obtain ongoing care and disability benefits.”

Bayh said the Pentagon has let down the military personnel who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the 509 Hoosiers who have been injured in the wars.

“Too often, in the past, there’ve been other priorities,” he said. “I got to tell you, around here, whenever there’s a weapon system, a new plan, a new ship being debated, lobbyists descend in flocks to promote those kinds of things. But this has just not been the kind of priority for the Defense Department it needs to have been.”

sylviasmith@jg.net

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Lawmakers pledge to fix problems at Walter Reed; Dole, Shalala to head administration probe <br />
<br />
By: ANNE FLAHERTY - Associated Press <br />
<br />
WASHINGTON -- Senators pledged on Tuesday to consider all...

[thedrifter]

Family backs ex-Reed chief in letters

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Mar 7, 2007 12:28:41 EST

Letters from two family members lambasting the Army for relieving Walter Reed commander Maj. Gen. George Weightman of duty apparently come against Weightman’s wishes.

“I must say that George and his wife have both asked that we in the family not speak on his behalf publicly,” wrote Douglas Kidd, Weightman’s brother-in-law. “I, nor any of us who really know him, will not obey that request.”

Kidd, who served with Weightman in the 25th Infantry Division, wrote: “The Army got the wrong guy.” The letters have been sent out to members of Congress, as well as several media publications. In the letter, Kidd wrote that Weightman did not have sufficient time in his six months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to address the problems facing injured service members who are outpatients there. The problems have been detailed by the Military Times and other news organizations in recent weeks.

“No one was more qualified than he to be in the position he held for such a short time at Walter Reed,” Kidd wrote. “The political necessity was that the Army had to show it was doing something, so what better way than to cut off the [Walter Reed] head as a way of playing to the baying wolves of the press.”

He wrote about Weightman’s accomplishments, including following a Delta Force team into Central America, where he became ill with malaria. He also has been credited with creating an “exemplary” system of caring for returning wounded troops at Brooke Army Medical Center, Kidd wrote.

“I am just sorry to see that the current leadership of the U.S. Army has robbed itself of one of its most capable leaders in the medical field,” Kidd wrote. “In the end, the soldiers and families for whom George Weightman has cared in combat and in peacetime for 30 years are the biggest losers.”

Weightman’s sister-in-law, Jeanette Kidd, also wrote that Weightman had been treated unfairly.

“It took him four months to get an inept high-level government worker fired,” she wrote. “Why? Because of the government processes. He was aware of most of the problems, and he was correcting them. George inherited this mess.”

She said Weightman had requested and then received money for improvements Feb. 4.

“They fired the wrong guy,” she wrote. “They needed a fall guy. I, for one, have lost faith in our government.”

Ellie

[thedrifter]

New York Delegation Fights for State's Veterans

Posted by: Maria Sisti, Assignment Editor
Created: 3/7/2007 3:22:49 PM
Updated: 3/7/2007 3:29:40 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Members of New York's congressional delegation are urging the Bush administration to do more to ensure veterans in
the Empire State have full access to needed health care.

Senator Chuck Schumer says the Veterans Administration has been chronically underfunded, and that returning soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors are paying the price.

And Congressman Thomas Reynolds of western New York is calling on the government to set up a hotline for veterans and their families to alert officials to problems in the VA health care
system.

The lawmakers' comment come amid the outcry over shoddy conditions and outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, just a few miles from the U.S. Capitol.

Members of Congress routinely make the trip to Walter Reed, but nothing they saw over the past three years apparently raised any alarms. But Reynolds says it's not unusual for visiting dignitaries to be given what he called "the white-glove treatment" when visiting public places.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Fresno VA Hospital Ranks 18th in Nation for Patient Satisfaction
By Liz Harrison

03/06/2007 - What's happening with the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center may have a positive effect on medical care for veterans all over the country. It's caused those who care for veterans to examine how well they're treating those who've put their lives on the line for our country, and that includes Fresno's VA Hospital.

The Veteran's Administration Medical Center in Fresno is the only VA hospital between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. There are 70 doctors take care of 3,200 Veterans.

In a system of 156 VA hospitals nationwide, Fresno's hospital ranks 18th in quality and satisfaction. The ranking comes from the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington. But the hospital director says he expects VA facilities to be under more scrutiny now that Walter Reed hospital has come under fire.

VA Hospital Director, Al Perry, says, "Part of looking at the care of Walter Reed Army Hospital, a separate system, congress has rightly decided that they want to look at all care for returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan."

Fresno's hospital director says his facility can boast a completely computerized patient file system, plus online access to X-Rays and CAT Scans.

Al Perry says Veterans should be entitled to the best medical care available. Nevertheless, Veterans can fall through the cracks, like Todd Livingston of Madera.

Livingston was in the Marines during Desert Storm. A year and a half ago, he went to the VA with a broken wrist. For four months he was misdiagnosed and by then, his wrist needed major surgery. In June, almost two years after he broke his wrist, he will have to have surgery to fuse the bone.

Livingston says, "When you're up like when you're at the primary care clinics, it's pretty good. But dealing in an emergency situation or where you're having to deal with the bureaucracy."

Director Perry says, "I will say that in a system this size, there are situations where we miss a diagnosis or we may not get the follow up exactly right, but we have two individuals who do patient advocacy. But I can guarantee that once this interview is over, we'll do everything in our power to make it right for this particular Veteran."

Livingston got a call from Fresno's VA hospital this afternoon. Perry said he would do the same for any Veteran. He told us that he expects there will be closer reviews of his hospital . . . and he welcomes it.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

N.C. military hospitals are being scrutinized, too
Jay Price, Staff Writer

The scandal-driven probe into medical treatment for wounded troops has reached North Carolina's three military hospitals.

The Department of Defense sent a fact-finding team of about a dozen people to the state's largest military hospital, Womack Army Medical Center on Fort Bragg, hospital spokeswoman Shannon Lynch said Wednesday. The Naval hospitals at Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune and a clinic at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro all have fielded calls from higher commands seeking information about how patients are handled.

The Pentagon's sudden interest in how even small clinics are treating war casualties is a reaction to a series by The Washington Post last month centered on conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

The journalists found unsanitary conditions in out-patient housing and a frustrating bureaucracy. Last week, the commanding general of the hospital was fired, and the secretary of the Army lost his job over the problems, too. This week, both the House and Senate held hearings on Walter Reed, and President Bush appointed former Sen. Bob Dole and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala to head a bipartisan commission that will probe how wounded troops are treated.

In a news conference Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that when he heard of the problems at Walter Reed, he immediately wondered about conditions at other facilities, and knew the Pentagon needed to check those, too.

He said that he had assigned two senior staff members to undertake a comprehensive review of all medical care programs, facilities and procedures in all services to make sure the Pentagon is providing proper care.

The questions that military health care officials in North Carolina are fielding from above concern the kinds of problems at Walter Reed.

At Womack, the fact-finding team -- part of an independent review group created by Gates -- toured the two sets of barracks for soldiers being treated as out-patients. These soldiers are members of what's called "medical hold companies," which were the main subject of the Post's stories.

The group also visited clinics in the hospital and requested data on how Womack works. "Basically they asked us to walk them through everything from the point a soldier is air-evaced here," Lynch said.

Womack administrators already were aware of the sometimes overwhelming layers of military medical bureaucracy. In March 2003, as the Iraq war began, they created a clinic specifically for wounded soldiers. Each is assigned a case worker who sticks with them through the system, making sure they get follow-up appointments and don't have problems with things like getting into the right speciality clinics, Lynch said.

A look at N.C. facilities

Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune also uses case workers. The hospital has 10 and is about to hire two more, said Capt. Brian Dawson, second in command there.

It decided to add more a couple of weeks ago after a brainstorming session on what was needed the most, he said. It was unrelated to the controversy about Walter Reed.

Unlike many military hospitals, the one at Camp Lejeune doesn't have housing for wounded outpatients. An injured Marine officer persuaded base leaders to build a unique Wounded Warrior Barracks run by the Marines rather than the Navy, which operates the hospital.

The rooms at the barracks -- which are visited regularly by journalists and politicians -- are in excellent condition. The idea, though, wasn't so much to improve housing for the wounded as it was to bring them together in the same place, given the Marines' well-known emphasis on camaraderie.

Naval Hospital Cherry Point is much smaller than either of the other two. It has two case managers who deal with the more complex cases, and the two handle just 34 service members, about the same load as one of Lejeune's.

All three of the state's military hospitals are relatively new. Womack opened in 2000 and Cherry Point in 1994. The oldest, Lejeune, opened in 1982 and already is being renovated.

All hospitals questioned

The main subjects of the Pentagon probe are 11 major military hospitals around the country, a group that includes Womack, which has 158 beds, but not Lejeune, which has 81. The fact-finding teams are expected to visit all 11.

But even the smaller facilities are getting attention. The Thomas Koritz Clinic at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro -- which has no hospital beds and has treated only three patients injured in Iraq or Afghanistan -- has been contacted.

Clinic commanders were asked questions such as whether it has any off-site housing for patients -- it doesn't -- and whether it has case management -- it does, said Master Sgt. Arthur Webb, a clinic spokesman.

Staff writer Jay Price can be reached at 829-4526 or jprice@newsobserver.com

Ellie

[thedrifter]

The Walter Reed Scandal as a History Lesson <br />
Strategy Page <br />
<br />
March 7, 2007: The recent scandal over poor care for wounded soldiers in the Washington, DC area, was yet another example of how...

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Veterans left in limbo by VA's bureaucracy <br />
By Rick Rogers and Jeff McDonald <br />
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS <br />
March 9, 2007 <br />
<br />
Sgt. James Wright, who lost both of his hands to a roadside bomb in Iraq,...