A bipartisan panel appointed by President Bush is calling for an overhaul of how the country cares for its wounded war veterans. The cost: $500 million a year for now, and as much as $1 billion a year later.
Paper-choked processes that delay or prevent veterans from receiving the care they need are at the crux of the failures at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the nine-member commission told the president on July 25 at a briefing in the Oval Office.
The panel, co-chaired by Sen. Bob Dole and Donna Shalala, former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, presented Bush with a 29-page report. The final report is due by July 31.
Among the government officials at the meeting were Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson. Nicholson announced his resignation on July 17, to take effect Oct. 1.
The government and others have held up both the VA and the Department of Defense as having developed some of the best healthcare information technology in the country. But the presidential panel described a system mired in red tape.
Among the commission's 35 recommendations is the restructuring of the disability pay systems to give the VA more responsibility for awarding benefits.
The commission also called for the VA and the Pentagon to build an e-benefits Web site that would give service members and physicians access to confidential medical information as injured soldiers moved from facility to facility for treatment.
The report acknowledged "excellent" medical care if and when the patient was able to navigate the system to receive it.
"While numerous aspects of U.S. medical care are excellent, problems in coordination and continuity of care are common," the report said. "Our overall health system is oriented to acute care, not long-term rehabilitation."
President Bush, who has been pushing for an electronic medical record for every citizen by 2014, said the panel's suggestions were "interesting and important."
"We owe our wounded soldiers the very best care, and the very best benefits, and the very easiest to understand system," Bush said. "And so they took a very interesting approach. They took the perspective from the patient, as the patient had to work his way through the hospitals and bureaucracies. And they've come up with some very interesting and important suggestions."
The president later told reporters he instructed the VA and Department of Defense secretaries "to take them seriously, and to implement them, so that we can say with certainty that any soldier who has been hurt will get the best possible care and treatment that this government can offer."