Care program misses badly wounded troops

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Care program misses badly wounded troops
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Apr 17, 2008 10:25:39 EDT

A new program that is supposed to provide a care coordinator to help severely injured service members navigate the military and veterans’ health care systems is failing to serve hundreds who were injured in the early years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a Senate subcommittee learned Wednesday.

The hiring of so-called federal recovery coordinators has been good news for those who are helped, said Meredith Beck, national policy director for the nonprofit Wounded Warrior Project. Most families who have contact with one of the coordinators “are very excited about the program,” Beck told the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee.

But Beck said the coordinators are focused on service members in military hospitals, not on people being treated mostly as outpatients or people who were injured before the coordinator program was created.

“There is a common and dangerous misperception that if you were injured earlier on, then all your problems have been solved,” she said. “I can tell you from personal experience those families are often the ones in need of the most help. They are the ‘bow wave,’ often finding the problems and facing them alone.”

A high-level Pentagon committee that is seeking to implement improvements in military health care is trying to find a way to extend care to older cases.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/military_benefits_woundedwarrior_041708w/