A presidential commission investigating how to fix gaping holes in the treatment of returning wounded soldiers and veterans targeted approaches to cut through bureaucratic red tape that sometimes produces unacceptable waits for medical care or benefits.
The report of the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors urges the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments to better support injured service members in their recovery and return to military duty or to veteran status, and to simplify the delivery of medical care and disability programs.
Critical to implementing the recommendations is VA and DOD making patient data more accessible and viewable. Essential health, administrative and benefits data must be immediately viewable by clinicians, allied health professionals and program administrators.
DOD and VA should continue their work to create an interoperable electronic health record system so health information follows the injured as they move from facility to facility to receive treatment, according to the report released July 26.
VA and DOD also would create a Web site called My e-Benefits that would be password protected and let service members and veterans securely enter information and receive tailored information about relevant programs and benefits in the public and private sectors.
“Today, in order to find such information, armed service members and veterans must navigate a disparate, confusing and cumbersome array of Web sites,” the report states.
The portal would be a one-stop information shop, customizable and personalized. It would host almost every type of data important to a patient’s recovery plan.
VA and DOD should restructure the disability claim process so that VA takes more responsibility for awarding benefits, including a single, standard medical examination that DOD would administer.
“It would serve DOD’s purpose of determining fitness and VA’s of determining initial disability level,” the report states.
Although VA has a tremendous backlog of disability claims, part of the problem stems from DOD not providing timely or correct data when VA has requested it, the Government Accountability Office said in congressional hearings earlier this year.
President Bush named the commission, led by former Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.), a wounded World War II veteran, and Donna Shalala, Health and Human Services Department secretary during the Clinton administration, following the poor treatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
The commission also called for Congress to make post-traumatic stress disorder care from VA available to all veterans who were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and to require comprehensive training programs in post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries for military leaders, VA and DOD personnel. VA recently announced it was adding mental health counselors and suicide prevention services at all facilities.
