thedrifter
03-10-07, 07:08 AM
Marine wife fights for wounded veterans
By: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer
NORTH COUNTY ---- Lifting the lid on the sordid living conditions in an annex to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., was only the first step in exposing serious problems within the military health care universe, a Camp Pendleton Marine wife and advocate for the severely wounded said this week.
Much more pervasive problems exist when it comes to the management and administration of care ---- problems that are much less visible than the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed, said Tonia Sargent.
"It's easy to take pictures of mold on the wall, but it's difficult to photograph the daily frustration and suffering of caregivers and the injured," Sargent said.
Sargent, whose husband was wounded in Iraq in 2004, has emerged as a local advocate for troop care against the backdrop of the national debate about conditions in military hospitals. She said that while her husband, Master Sgt. Kenneth Sargent, undergoes care for a traumatic brain injury, she hasn't seen problems with dilapidated housing like those at Walter Reed.
Tonia Sargent said she is very concerned about the red tape that plagues military health care, turning the administration and management of the cases of the severely wounded into a veritable nightmare for service members and their families.
In August 2004, her husband was caught in an ambush in Iraq. During the attack, a bullet damaged the front part of his brain. For the past 2 1/2 years, he has lived with the pain, the anxiety, the memory loss and depression of traumatic brain injury.
She and her two teenage daughters have done what they can to alleviate his suffering, Tonia Sargent said. But as tough as that job is, it's been made even tougher by a system that seems designed to erect obstacles, she said.
Dealing with the bureaucracy and administering her husband's care as she runs from one doctor to another, from one government office to another, required her to quit her job to devote herself full time to managing her husband's health care, she said.
"If not for the nonprofits (who have helped me) I would not have been able to pay my bills," Sargent said. "I have been unemployed for 2 1/2 years."
Part of the problem, she said, is that there is no universal computer system that is used by branches of the military and the Veterans Affairs.
She said that her husband has case managers in the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense.
"The Navy doesn't know what the Marine Corps needs and none of them know what the VA needs," Sargent said. "I spend all my time coordinating, I have to figure it out."
In the process of all this, she said, she has become an ever-more serious advocate for the severely wounded and their families.
"I need for the people of the world to know what our families go through," Sargent said in a Thursday phone interview from a New York hotel room.
With speaking engagements, a Wednesday appearance on "The Montel Williams Show" for a panel discussion on veterans' health care issues, and a Thursday meeting with 2008 presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Sargent has been thrust into the spotlight of late.
Sargent said she is grateful to the Marine Corps for keeping her husband on active-duty status so that he will be able to receive his retirement benefits once he completes his 20 years in the Corps this summer.
But even though he is still in the Marines, her husband uses Veterans Affairs facilities for many of his health care needs, Sargent said, including the department's San Diego Medical Center and its Palo Alto Heath Care System.
One of her top goals is to reduce what she calls the crippling bureaucracy that often makes it so difficult for veterans to get the health care and benefits they need, she said.
Many of the men and women who have been wounded have multiple physical and mental issues. As a result, claims for benefits are often quite complex, Sargent said in an earlier interview. A complicated set of requirements determines the outcome of a single claim, based on medical review boards.
Complicating things still further, the medical filing system is antiquated, with medical records often disappearing, she said.
Officials with the VA's San Diego Medical Center could not be reached for comment Friday.
Testifying before a House panel looking into problems with health care this week, former Veterans Affairs project manager Paul Sullivan painted a picture of neglect, bureaucratic delays and poor coordination in the nation's vast network of 1,400 VA hospitals and clinics.
Sullivan also told the panel that in August 2005, he had warned officials there would be a surge in claims as veterans returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I made those warnings on several occasions," he said, but never received a response.
Vista resident and Gulf War veteran Nick Morris said Thursday that before veterans can get the treatment they need, they must go through a mind-numbing amount of red tape.
Morris, a 41-year-old former Army Special Forces soldier, has been in treatment for post-traumatic stress syndrome since 1997. He said that it took him nearly six months of working his way through the bureaucratic maze with the Veterans Affairs before he finally saw a doctor. His frustration with the system eventually led him to seek private care, Morris said, adding that he has friends in North County who are Iraq war veterans who tell him they are experiencing the same thing when they seek treatment.
"You can go down to the Vista Veterans Center and just feel the pain in these people from the process," Morris said. "Just sitting in that waiting room, all the veterans talk to each other and 90 percent of them are (sharing) horror stories of what they had to go through as far as the bureaucratic crap."
He said he worries about what is going to happen when more of the men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan come back to the U.S.
"This is going to get ugly," Morris said. "The system is going to have to fast track these guys, or we are going to have more people committing suicide while they are waiting for help."
Recent statistics from Walter Reed show that traumatic brain injuries make up 29 percent of the battle-related injuries in Iraq that require medical evacuation.
Sargent said that, as many of those service members continue to live in pain, their suffering is only compounded by the bureaucratic nightmares they must face to get the care they need.
"It's not only the physical and mental injuries they are trying to survive, it's the red tape that ultimately makes them feel a bigger letdown," she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact staff writer William Finn Bennett at (760) 740-5426 or wbennett@nctimes.com.
Ellie
By: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer
NORTH COUNTY ---- Lifting the lid on the sordid living conditions in an annex to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., was only the first step in exposing serious problems within the military health care universe, a Camp Pendleton Marine wife and advocate for the severely wounded said this week.
Much more pervasive problems exist when it comes to the management and administration of care ---- problems that are much less visible than the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed, said Tonia Sargent.
"It's easy to take pictures of mold on the wall, but it's difficult to photograph the daily frustration and suffering of caregivers and the injured," Sargent said.
Sargent, whose husband was wounded in Iraq in 2004, has emerged as a local advocate for troop care against the backdrop of the national debate about conditions in military hospitals. She said that while her husband, Master Sgt. Kenneth Sargent, undergoes care for a traumatic brain injury, she hasn't seen problems with dilapidated housing like those at Walter Reed.
Tonia Sargent said she is very concerned about the red tape that plagues military health care, turning the administration and management of the cases of the severely wounded into a veritable nightmare for service members and their families.
In August 2004, her husband was caught in an ambush in Iraq. During the attack, a bullet damaged the front part of his brain. For the past 2 1/2 years, he has lived with the pain, the anxiety, the memory loss and depression of traumatic brain injury.
She and her two teenage daughters have done what they can to alleviate his suffering, Tonia Sargent said. But as tough as that job is, it's been made even tougher by a system that seems designed to erect obstacles, she said.
Dealing with the bureaucracy and administering her husband's care as she runs from one doctor to another, from one government office to another, required her to quit her job to devote herself full time to managing her husband's health care, she said.
"If not for the nonprofits (who have helped me) I would not have been able to pay my bills," Sargent said. "I have been unemployed for 2 1/2 years."
Part of the problem, she said, is that there is no universal computer system that is used by branches of the military and the Veterans Affairs.
She said that her husband has case managers in the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense.
"The Navy doesn't know what the Marine Corps needs and none of them know what the VA needs," Sargent said. "I spend all my time coordinating, I have to figure it out."
In the process of all this, she said, she has become an ever-more serious advocate for the severely wounded and their families.
"I need for the people of the world to know what our families go through," Sargent said in a Thursday phone interview from a New York hotel room.
With speaking engagements, a Wednesday appearance on "The Montel Williams Show" for a panel discussion on veterans' health care issues, and a Thursday meeting with 2008 presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Sargent has been thrust into the spotlight of late.
Sargent said she is grateful to the Marine Corps for keeping her husband on active-duty status so that he will be able to receive his retirement benefits once he completes his 20 years in the Corps this summer.
But even though he is still in the Marines, her husband uses Veterans Affairs facilities for many of his health care needs, Sargent said, including the department's San Diego Medical Center and its Palo Alto Heath Care System.
One of her top goals is to reduce what she calls the crippling bureaucracy that often makes it so difficult for veterans to get the health care and benefits they need, she said.
Many of the men and women who have been wounded have multiple physical and mental issues. As a result, claims for benefits are often quite complex, Sargent said in an earlier interview. A complicated set of requirements determines the outcome of a single claim, based on medical review boards.
Complicating things still further, the medical filing system is antiquated, with medical records often disappearing, she said.
Officials with the VA's San Diego Medical Center could not be reached for comment Friday.
Testifying before a House panel looking into problems with health care this week, former Veterans Affairs project manager Paul Sullivan painted a picture of neglect, bureaucratic delays and poor coordination in the nation's vast network of 1,400 VA hospitals and clinics.
Sullivan also told the panel that in August 2005, he had warned officials there would be a surge in claims as veterans returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I made those warnings on several occasions," he said, but never received a response.
Vista resident and Gulf War veteran Nick Morris said Thursday that before veterans can get the treatment they need, they must go through a mind-numbing amount of red tape.
Morris, a 41-year-old former Army Special Forces soldier, has been in treatment for post-traumatic stress syndrome since 1997. He said that it took him nearly six months of working his way through the bureaucratic maze with the Veterans Affairs before he finally saw a doctor. His frustration with the system eventually led him to seek private care, Morris said, adding that he has friends in North County who are Iraq war veterans who tell him they are experiencing the same thing when they seek treatment.
"You can go down to the Vista Veterans Center and just feel the pain in these people from the process," Morris said. "Just sitting in that waiting room, all the veterans talk to each other and 90 percent of them are (sharing) horror stories of what they had to go through as far as the bureaucratic crap."
He said he worries about what is going to happen when more of the men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan come back to the U.S.
"This is going to get ugly," Morris said. "The system is going to have to fast track these guys, or we are going to have more people committing suicide while they are waiting for help."
Recent statistics from Walter Reed show that traumatic brain injuries make up 29 percent of the battle-related injuries in Iraq that require medical evacuation.
Sargent said that, as many of those service members continue to live in pain, their suffering is only compounded by the bureaucratic nightmares they must face to get the care they need.
"It's not only the physical and mental injuries they are trying to survive, it's the red tape that ultimately makes them feel a bigger letdown," she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact staff writer William Finn Bennett at (760) 740-5426 or wbennett@nctimes.com.
Ellie