Military leaders promising progress on disability claims

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Military leaders promising progress on disability claims



By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, February 16, 2008


WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials acknowledged this week that massive overhauls are still needed to make the military’s disability claims system easier to navigate and less confrontational.
“I can tell you one of the most difficult aspects of being at Walter Reed this last year … was standing in front of patients and families and feeling I was the enemy,” Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, head of Army Medical Command, told House lawmakers on Friday.
“That is a direct outflow of what a divisive and antagonistic system our disability process has become.”
Commissions studying the current system last year criticized the process for creating long waits for patients, repetitive exams and paperwork, and inconsistencies in evaluations of injuries.
Defense officials responded in November with a pilot program consolidating all of the medical checks into a single evaluation performed by Department of Veterans Affairs personnel, with the goal of giving patients quicker answers to whether they can stay in the service and for which veterans’ benefits they will be eligible.
That pilot, which involves five military medical facilities in the Washington area, is scheduled to run until November. But earlier this week David Chu, undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, told a Senate committee he sees the interdepartmental process as a likely future for the system.
“I think the solution is some single exam system (for troops), and we’re already working towards that goal,” he said.
On Friday, Schoomaker called the pilot “a good start, but we want to continue to pursue more changes in the system as aggressively as possible.”
Lawmakers in both chambers noted that the services have made marked improvements in the last year in helping injured troops — new warrior transition units, better access to physicians, more resources for families of patients — but said the disability process continues to be a common complaint.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said while he supports the pilot program, waiting until November to expand it is unfair to the wounded troops trapped in the old evaluation process.



Stars and Stripes: Military leaders promising progress on disability claims



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