[Vision2020] Support for veterans

[lfalen]

Tom
I don't know if you reed The American Legion Magazine or not, but there is a good article in the February issue on General Richard Cody. He stresses the need for improving support for veterans. He supports the Dole-Shalala recommendations.
Create comprehensive recovery plans, managed by a corps of recovery-plan coordinators, to ease the transition to civilian life.
Udate and simplify the process for determining disability ratings and benefits between DoD and VA.
Aggressively improve care for veterans suffering brain injury and post-traumatic  disorders, signature combat conditions faced by those who fought in Iraq and afghanistan.
significantly strengthen support for military families.
More rapidly transfer patient information between DoA and VA.
Recruit and retain first-rate professionals through 2011 at Walter Red Army Medical Center.

On the unsanitary conditions reveled last winer a Walter Reed outpatient facility he says; Our challenge will be to put behind us Building 18. It was never an issue about the quality of care for soldiers on the ward, the soldiers in the intensive care units. Walter Reed is the best hospital in the world. If you have a traumatic anything, you want to be at Walter Reed. The issue had to do with soliers who were being processed out, with medical problems. The whole system got overloaded. It had nothing to do with medical treatment. It all had to do with having the leadership and assisting them through the maze of medical evaluation boards, physical evaluation boards, and then trying to marry up what benefits they got, especially if they weren't going to get 30-percent disability ratings from VA.
Walter Reed is fully funded until the day we close the doors. Everyone is looking at "closing" Walter Reed. Look at this as closing a post, a hospital, that was going to cost aus almost $1 billion to upgrade. It had no room, bounded by four streets. So the discussion was made to move Walter Reed, merge it with Bethesda, rename it Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and to build a world-class military medical center. The Bethesda campus, six miles away, has three  rimes the room to build new.


I spent 12 weeks OJT at Walter Reed in 1961-62. I was billeted at Walter Reed, but worked at Bethesda. From there  I was transfered to Brook Army Hospital, Fort Sam Houston in San antonio, Texas, another great hospital

Roger