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AT HEARING, COMMANDERS APOLOGIZE FOR WALTER REED

FAILURES -- House Members say the Army's problems

in dealing with the nation's war wounded go far

beyond Walter Reed.

 

Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, military wife Annette McLeod and
Spec. Jeremy Duncan testify on conditions at Walter Reed.

 

Story here... http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/
05/AR2007030500676.html

Story below:

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At Hearing, Commanders Apologize for Walter Reed Failures

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer

Senior Army commanders today apologized for failures that forced some wounded outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to live in substandard conditions and wage lengthy bureaucratic battles over their treatment, and they vowed to improve a system that they said had been overwhelmed by the numbers of wounded combatants and the complexity of their injuries.

Appearing at a House subcommittee hearing held in an auditorium at Walter Reed, the generals spoke after listening to emotional testimony from two wounded soldiers and the wife of a third about their struggles at the Washington, D.C., hospital complex.

In response to a question, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, who was recently fired by the Army as commander of Walter Reed, said at one point, "I would just like to apologize for not meeting their expectations." Turning around in his chair at the witness table and addressing the three witnesses who testified before him, he added, "I promise we will do better."

Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the Army surgeon general who previously commanded Walter Reed from 2002 to 2004, said, "I feel terrible for them." He pledged to redouble efforts to simplify the bureaucratic system that wounded troops must deal with on their return, adding, "We've got to give the benefit of the doubt to the soldier and his family" when it comes to assessing injuries and rating disabilities.

Members of the House panel, the national security subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the Army's problems in dealing with the nation's war wounded go far beyond Walter Reed, and they attributed the difficulties in part to inadequate planning for the war in Iraq and a program to privatize military support functions.

The hearing was held to look into shortcomings exposed in a Washington Post series last month that documented squalid conditions in living quarters for wounded outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed and a bureaucratic morass that prevented some soldiers from getting the care they needed, leaving them and their families to languish in outpatient limbo for months on end.

In the aftermath of the disclosures, the Army fired Weightman, even though he had been on the job at Walter Reed for slightly more than six months, and Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey was forced to resign. Several lower-ranking soldiers at Walter Reed were also relieved of their duties, and both the Defense Department and President Bush announced the formation of investigatory commissions.

"We have let some soldiers down," said Peter Geren, undersecretary of the Army. "And working with the Congress and the leadership of the Army, all the way down to the lowest ranking civilian or uniformed military, we're going to fix that problem. In fact, we're in the process of fixing it."

Vice President Cheney also promised remedial action in a speech to a gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington today.

"There will be no excuses -- only action," he said. "And the federal bureaucracy will not slow that action down."

Cheney's office later announced that doctors have found a blood clot in his left leg, but he was not admitted to a hospital and will be treated with blood thinning medication.

Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), the chairman of the national security subcommittee, said the problems at Walter Reed are "the tip of the iceberg." He questioned whether they are "just another horrific consequence of the terrible planning that went into our invasion of Iraq," whether President Bush's plan for a troop surge into Iraq will exacerbate the problems and whether "an ideological push for privatization put the care of our wounded heroes at risk"

Tierney said, "More and more evidence is appearing to indicate that senior officials were aware for several years of the types of problems" that were revealed by The Post. "These are not new or sudden problems. Rats and cockroaches don't burrow and infest overnight. Mold and holes in ceilings don't occur in a week. And complaints of bureaucratic indifference have been reported for years."

He expressed concern that the Army had moved to "designate a fall guy" and is "literally trying to whitewash" the issue. He called for a "sustained focus" in taking corrective action and holding people accountable.

"I also, unfortunately, feel that these problems go well beyond the walls of Walter Reed, and that they are problems systemic throughout the military health care system," Tierney said. "And as we send more and more troops into Iraq and Afghanistan, these problems are only going to get worse, not better. And we should be prepared to deal with them."

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the full committee, echoed Tierney's concerns. "People are flooding us with complaints that it's not just Walter Reed; check out what's going on all around the country," he said.

For too long, said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), the former chairman of the House committee, there have been "complaints about substandard and disjointed care for wounded soldiers who have been treated as distant abstractions." Citing "institutional indifference" as the main culprit, he charged that "the crushing complexity and glacial pace of outpatient procedures in medical evaluation boards are Army-wide problems."

Building 18, a dilapidated former hotel just outside the Walter Reed compound where some soldiers lived with mold, rot, mice and cockroaches, "is just one visible symptom of a far more insidious and pervasive malady," David said. "All the plaster and paint in the world won't cure a system that seems institutionally predisposed to treat wounded soldiers like inconveniences rather than heroes."

Wounded soldiers and their families "should be embraced, not abandoned," he said. "They should be healed and nurtured, not left to languish or fend for themselves against a faceless bureaucratic hydra."

Army Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon told the panel he suffered a brain injury and lost his left eye when he was wounded in the head by an AK-47 round near the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi in November 2004. Yet, he was discharged as an outpatient at Walter Reed just five days later and essentially left to fend for himself on the hospital campus. He described having to navigate a bureaucratic maze while waiting for the Army to perform plastic surgery give him a prosthetic eye.

"Two years after first being admitted to Walter Reed, I'm hearing the same thing about the process that I heard when I first began it two years ago," said Shannon, who wore his Purple Heart over his black eye patch. "I want to leave this place. I have seen so many soldiers get so frustrated with the process that they will sign anything presented to them just so they can get on with their lives."

Shannon complained that wounded soldiers "have almost no advocacy that is not working for the government" and have troubled getting informed guidance.

"The system can't be trusted," he said. "And soldiers get less than they deserve from a system seemingly designed and run to cut the costs associated with fighting this war. The truly sad thing is that surviving veterans from every war we've ever fought can tell the same basic story: a story about neglect, lack of advocacy and frustration with the military bureaucracy."

Annette McLeod, wife of a South Carolina National Guard soldier who suffered a brain injury in an accident in Iraq, said she did not find out her husband was hurt until he called her himself from a New Jersey hospital where he had been sent by mistake. Cpl. Wendell McLeod was 10 months into his tour when he was hit in the head by the steel cargo door of an 18-wheel truck while doing an inventory in Iraq in 2005, she said.

"For a long time, it seemed like I was the only one who cared," she said. "Certainly, the Army didn't care."

She described a lengthy struggle to get care for her husband in the face of an Army bureaucracy that was trying to cut costs and decided that his injuries were the result of preexisting conditions.

Spec. Jeremy Duncan, who was wounded by a roadside bomb while deployed in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division, did not have problems with his medical care but with conditions in Building 18, which he called "unforgivable," especially for wounded soldiers with weak immune systems.

"The black mold can do damage to people," he told the panel. "Holes in the walls. I wouldn't live there, even if I had to. It wasn't fit for anybody."

But his repeated complaints were ignored for a year until the Post series highlighted his case. Then he was immediately moved out of the room, and renovations began the next day, he said.

McLeod called Weightman, who took over as Walter Reed commander in August 2006, a "fine, honorable man" who "had nothing to do with our situation." She told the subcommittee, "He was, in my perspective, being punished because he caught the tail end of it. Mr. Weightman, in my opinion, he was just shoved into a situation that was already there, and because somebody had to be the fall guy, he was there."

She charged that Weightman's predecessor, Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer Jr., bore more of the blame for the situation and had repeatedly rebuffed her attempts to bring complaints to his attention. Farmer, who commanded Walter Reed from 2004 to 2006 and has since retired, did not attend the hearing.

In his opening remarks, Kiley, who also heads the Army Medical Command, told the subcommittee, "As we've seen over the last several days, the housing condition here in one of the buildings at Walter Reed clearly has not met our standards. And for that, I am personally and professionally sorry, and I offer my apologies to the soldiers, the families, the civilian and military leadership of the Army and the Department of Defense and to the nation."

He also said it was clear that the bureaucratic systems behind the Army's medical and physical evaluation boards "are complex and demand urgent simplification."

Saying he was dedicated to positive change, Kiley told the panel, "I am in command. And as I share these failures, I also accept the responsibility and the challenge for rapid corrective action."

Weightman also took responsibility. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Army leaders and members of Congress "have called this a failure of leadership," he said. "I agree. I was the Walter Reed commander and, from what we see, with some soldiers' living conditions and the administrative challenges that we faced, and the complex Medical Board/Physical Evaluation Board processes, it is clear mistakes were made and I was in charge."

Weightman added, "We can't fail one of these soldiers or their families, not one. And we did."

Cynthia A. Bascetta, director of health care at the Government Accountability Office, testified that because of medical advances, many more wounded troops are surviving severe injuries that would have been fatal in previous wars.

"But the miracle of battlefield medicine is also the enduring hardship of the war borne by the soldiers and their families," she said. "Following acute hospital care, their recovery often requires comprehensive inpatient rehabilitation to address complex cognitive, physical and psychological impairments. This exacts a huge toll on the patients and their families."

Waxman cited a series of media, government and think-tank reports as he told the Army brass that the problems at Walter Reed were known long before the Post series appeared and should have been addressed earlier.

"We've got all these reports with all these alarm bells going off . . . and the information doesn't seem to get up the line of command," Waxman complained.

"Where have you been?" Tierney asked a third panel of witnesses: Geren, the Army undersecretary; Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff; and Gen. Richard A. Cody, the vice chief of staff.

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Larry Scott  --