Walter Reed Army Medical Center neglect scandal
Encyclopedia
The Walter Reed Army Medical Center neglect scandal resulted from a series of allegations of unsatisfactory conditions and management at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
The Walter Reed Army Medical Center was the United States Army's flagship medical center until 2011. Located on 113 acres in Washington, D.C., it served more than 150,000 active and retired personnel from all branches of the military...

 (WRAMC) in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 culminating in two articles published by The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

 in February 2007. Cases of outpatient neglect, which are currently under investigation, were reported as early as 2004, but generated substantial public and media attention, which in turn prompted a number of congressional and executive actions, only with release of the Post exposé.

Initial exposure

The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

 published a series of articles beginning February 18, 2007, outlining cases of neglect at Walter Reed reported by wounded soldiers and their family members. Although the article focused primarily on Building 18, a former hotel building just outside the post's main gates, authors Dana Priest
Dana Priest
Dana Priest is an American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Priest has worked almost 20 years for The Washington Post. As one of the Post's specialists on National Security she has written many articles on the United States' "War on terror." In 2006 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat...

 and Anne Hull
Anne Hull
Anne Hull is an American journalist, on the national staff of the Washington Post.She won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.-Life:...

 also included complaints about "disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked managers" that make navigating the already complicated bureaucracy to obtain medical care at WRAMC even more daunting. Although Army officials claimed to be surprised at these conditions, a Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

 series beginning in January 2005 had previously exposed them. In 2004 and 2005, articles appeared in the Post and in Salon interviewing First Lt. Julian Goodrum about his court martial for seeking medical care elsewhere due to poor conditions at WRAMC.

Building 18

WRAMC's Building 18 is described in the article as rat- and cockroach
Cockroach
Cockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria or Blattodea, of which about 30 species out of 4,500 total are associated with human habitations...

-infested, with stained carpets, cheap mattresses, and black mold, with no heat and water reported by some soldiers at the facility. The unmonitored entrance created security problems, including reports of drug dealers in front of the facility. Injured soldiers stated they are forced to "pull guard duty" to obtain a level of security. In an attempt to alleviate the toll that Building 18's condition is taking on the wounded soldiers, a staff team headed by a clinical social worker at WRAMC obtained a grant of $30,000 from the Commander's Initiative Account for improvements; however, "a Psychiatry Department functionary held up the rest of the money because she feared that buying a lot of recreational equipment close to Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

 would trigger an audit." By January the funds were no longer available.

The problems associated with Building 18 were not new to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center community. As early as 1999 the extensive problems with Building 18 were identified to senior level leadership, and funding for renovations and improvements were denied. Prior to its role housing wounded warriors, Building 18 had long served as the barracks of WRAMC Student Company. Between 1999 and 2001, under the Command of then Captain Michael D. Dake, the Student Company leadership identified the deplorable conditions in and around Building 18 to two Medical Center Brigade Commanders (COL Terry D. Carroll, and COL Larry S. Bolton respectively). By 2002, the requests for funding to improve conditions in and around Building 18 had made it to the attention of Major General Kevin C. Kiley. Kiley, who toured the facility as part of his Commader's in-brief after arriving in June, personally inspected the facility and spoke to the Soldiers and the Leadership. He then also denied funding for improvements. By 2004, renovation of Building 18 had been anticipated in connection with the enhanced use lease
Enhanced use lease
In the United States Enhanced Use Lease is a method for funding construction or renovations on military property by allowing a private developer to lease underutilized property, with rent paid by the developer in the form of cash or in-kind services. Currently, EULs are used by the Department of...

 of Building 40, but since the post was slated for closure under BRAC in 2005, the anticipated in-kind services by the Building 40 developer did not materialize.

Although the Posts authors are quick to point out that "not all the quarters are as bleak as" Building 18, "the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded. The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands – most of them off-post – to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army's three personnel databases cannot read each other's files and can't interact with the separate pay system or the medical recordkeeping databases." This complicated system has required some soldiers to prove they were in the Iraq War or the War in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...

 in order to obtain medical treatment and benefits because Walter Reed employees are unable to locate their records.

Consequences

Less than a week after the article, new Defense Secretary Robert Gates
Robert Gates
Dr. Robert Michael Gates is a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W....

 visited Walter Reed and said those responsible would be "held accountable":
"I endorse the decision by Secretary of the Army Fran Harvey
Francis J. Harvey
Francis Joseph Harvey served as the 19th Secretary of the United States Army from November 19, 2004 to March 9, 2007.-Education and family:Harvey was born and raised in Latrobe, Pennsylvania...

 to relieve the Commander, Major General George W. Weightman
George W. Weightman
Major General George W. Weightman was a U.S. Army Family Medicine physician who was commander of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center . He was relieved of his WRAMC command on March 1, 2007, in the wake of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center neglect...

 of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The care and welfare of our wounded men and women in uniform demand the highest standard of excellence and commitment that we can muster as a government. When this standard is not met, I will insist on swift and direct corrective action and, where appropriate, accountability up the chain of command."


The Army announced it had relieved of command Maj. Gen. Weightman, a physician who had headed the hospital for only six months. In a brief announcement, the Army said service leaders had "lost trust and confidence" in Weightman's leadership abilities "to address needed solutions for soldier outpatient care." It said the decision to fire him was made by Secretary of the Army
United States Secretary of the Army
The Secretary of the Army is a civilian official within the Department of Defense of the United States of America with statutory responsibility for all matters relating to the United States Army: manpower, personnel, reserve affairs, installations, environmental issues, weapons systems and...

 Francis J. Harvey
Francis J. Harvey
Francis Joseph Harvey served as the 19th Secretary of the United States Army from November 19, 2004 to March 9, 2007.-Education and family:Harvey was born and raised in Latrobe, Pennsylvania...

.

Harvey then named Army Surgeon General and former Walter Reed commander Kevin Kiley
Kevin Kiley
Kevin Kiley is the name of:* Kevin C. Kiley, retired Lieutenant General of the United States Army* Kevin Kiley , American sportscaster and talk show host...

 as interim commander, but Harvey himself was forced to resign by Gates on March 2. Gates felt Harvey wasn't getting the Army to move fast enough on making necessary changes. Maj. Gen. Eric Schoomaker
Eric Schoomaker
Lieutenant General Eric B. Schoomaker, United States Army is the 42nd Surgeon General of the United States Army and Commanding General, United States Army Medical Command, and a practicing hematologist. He previously served as Commanding General, North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter...

 was named the new commander of Walter Reed on March 2. Kiley himself retired on March 12, 2007 after acting Army Secretary Pete Geren
Pete Geren
Preston M. "Pete" Geren, III served as the 20th United States Secretary of the Army from July 16, 2007 to September 16, 2009...

 asked for Kiley's resignation.

An internal WRAMC memorandum from September 2006 warned that the personnel shortage caused by an outsourcing of public works servicehttp://www.reliabilityweb.com/art08/walter_reed.htms put WRAMC in danger of "mission failure".

University of Miami
University of Miami
The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

 President and former Clinton cabinet Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala
Donna Shalala
Donna Edna Shalala served for eight years as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton and has been president of the University of Miami, a private university in Coral Gables, Florida, since 2001. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest...

, along with former Republican Senator Bob Dole
Bob Dole
Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996...

, were appointed by President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 to lead the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors
President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors
- Charter :On March 6, 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush established the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors , also known as the Dole-Shalala Commission, to examine and recommend improvements to the effectiveness and quality of transition from to return to...

, an investigative panel regarding the various allegations. The remaining Commission members included two veterans wounded in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the wife of an Army Staff Sergeant severely burned in Iraq, the Chairman and CEO of a non-for-profit organization that constructs "comfort homes" for families of hospitalized military servicemembers, two leaders in the health care industry, and an expert on veterans affairs and military health care. This commission released their final report on July 26, 2007 and issued their findings in testimony to the U.S. Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs on September 26, 2007.

The scandal at Walter Reed led to an extensive analysis of the veteran's healthcare system, as well, managed by the United States Department of Veterans' Affairs. Amidst accusations of mismanagement and excessive bureaucracy, the VA announced an extensive review of all of their medical facilities to ensure healthcare standards are being met.

External links

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