The Marine Corps have been planning for this since last summer. This falls into the tradition of the Marines- taking care of their own.
WASHINGTON, April 4 (UPI) — The U.S. Marines Wednesday announced the creation of a special regiment assigned to advocate for all Marine wounded through the military medical system.
The effort began months before the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal highlighted the problems of military wounded in navigating the confusing health care bureaucracies of the Defense Department and Veterans Administration.
I hope this doesn’t get BIG though…because that’s when we see the problems we saw with Walter Reed’s overall system.
Col. Gregory Boyle is the regiment’s first commander, responsible for accounting for, tracking and meeting the needs of wounded, ill and injured Marines, from medical care through benefits, and transitioning to civilian life if they can not return to active duty.
“This brings oversight to the whole process to eliminate possible seams or cracks where Marines may fall through the system,” Boyle said Wednesday.
So long as they maintain this mission this should work. I would like to see them eliminate much of the wasteful and often repeated paperwork requirements; the process of asking for a medical discharge should not take a year or longer to accomplish. And waiting months for tests, only to have them repeated because no one kept track of the original notes for said tests, is just uncalled for. Even in our biggest hospitals we don’t see bumbling errors such as this.
On any given day there are about 370 wounded Marines either at Landstuhl medical center in Germany, Bethesda Naval Medical Center, Camp Lejeune and Camp Pendleton.
I wonder if this command will take over the entire oversight for the Marine Corps…or will the VA system still hold final say? It would be more efficient to keep it all under wraps through the Corps and no other group. Less government means less error and waste.
Boyle said the Marine Corps will also be in contact in an organized way with Marines wounded since 2001 who have left the service.
“My vision is to reach out to them on a monthly basis …,” he said.
“I want these Marines to feel, you know, that they’re the center of the universe and that we care about them and we’re concerned about them,” he said.
THIS is very important. Those who have “healed” and moved on need support and resources. Just because they’ve recovered from the initial war injuries does not mean they are 100% better. It doesn’t mean they are able to live their lives as normal people do. I’m sure we’ll hear lots more about this as time goes forward. Maybe the DoD is using this as a model for the other services. It would be a giant leap in the right direction. Personally I think the entire Military Medical/Veterans Administration should be abolished and smaller programs should be put in place. There are MORE than enough specialty hospitals and rehab centers in the US where excellent and truly state of the art therapies and programs are in existence. No one deserves access to these services more than our wounded soldiers and Marines.
