Wounded Warriors, Empty Promises--NYT

[Guest guest]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25fri1.html?th & emc=th

The New York Times

July 25, 2008

Editorial

Wounded Warriors, Empty Promises

The bad news about the Army’s treatment of wounded soldiers keeps

coming. The generals keep apologizing and insisting that things are

getting better, but they are not.

The latest low moment for Army brass came on Tuesday in Washington,

where a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee held a

hearing to examine the sorry state of the Army Medical Action Plan.

That’s the plan to prevent the kind of systematic neglect and

mistreatment exposed by The Washington Post last year at the Walter

Army Medical Center.

After a flurry of apologies, firings, investigations and reports, the

Army resolved to streamline and improve case management for wounded

soldiers. Under the plan, “warrior transition units” would swiftly

deliver excellent care to troops so they could return to duty or be

discharged into the veterans’ medical system. Each soldier would be

assigned a team to look over his or her care: a physician, a nurse and

a squad leader. It all sounded sensible and comprehensive.

It has not worked out so well. Staff members of the House subcommittee

who visited numerous warrior transition units June 2007 to February

found a significant gap between the Army leadership’s optimistic

promises and reality.

Among other things, the Army failed to anticipate a flood of wounded

soldiers. Some transition units have been overwhelmed and are thus

severely understaffed. At Fort Hood, Tex., last month, staff members

found 1,362 patients in a unit authorized for 649 — and more than 350

on a waiting list. Of the total, 311 were identified as being at high

risk of drug overdose, suicide or other dangerous behavior. There were

38 nurse case managers when there should have been 74. Some soldiers

have had to languish two months to a year before the Army decided what

to do with them, far longer than the goal the Army set last year.

Under skeptical questioning during a hearing in February, Lt. Gen.

Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, told the subcommittee that

“for all intents and purposes, we are entirely staffed at the point we

need to be staffed.” He also said: “The Army’s unwavering commitment

and a key element of our warrior ethos is that we never leave a

soldier behind on the battlefield — or lost in a bureaucracy.”

That was thousands of wounded, neglected soldiers ago. There are now

about 12,500 soldiers assigned to the warrior transition units — more

than twice as many as a year ago. The number is expected to reach

20,000 by this time next year.

The nation’s responsibility to care for the wounded from Iraq and

Afghanistan will extend for decades. After Tuesday’s hearing, we are

left pondering the simple questions asked at the outset by

Representative , the California Democrat who is chairwoman

of the military personnel subcommittee: Why did the Army fail to

adequately staff its warrior transition units? Why did it fail to

predict the surge in demand? And why did it take visits from a

Congressional subcommittee to prod the Army into recognizing and

promising — yet again — to fix the problem?

Meryl Nass, MD

Mount Desert Island Hospital

Bar Harbor, Maine 04609

207 288-5081 ext. 220

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com

http://www.anthraxvaccine.org