Renovations underway at Walter Reed - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Renovations underway at Walter Reed

The moldy walls and leaking ceilings in Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Building 18 are being repaired —– patching for now, with a wholesale remodeling to come.

And officials say the tangle of red tape inherent in the medical evaluation process that determines whether troops who’ve suffered war wounds can return to duty is going to get streamlined.

But the reassuring words from Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army surgeon general, didn’t do much to lessen the Army’s initial embarrassment over published reports about recovering vets living in substandard conditions in Building 18, an overflow facility outside the main Walter Reed campus.

Those same reports, in The Washington Post and the Military Times papers, also found that recovering veterans there and on the main campus — 652 wounded vets are assigned or attached to Walter Reed — face long delays and frustrations while dealing with administrative issues such as pay and benefits, lost records and medical evaluations.

Kiley, who on Feb. 22 took questions from some 40 reporters and photographers gathered at the sprawling medical center, called the Post reports “one-sided” but readily acknowledged the problems emphatically underlined earlier in the week by Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s chief of staff. “Clearly, we’ve had a breakdown in leadership, and the bureaucratic, medical and professional processes bogged down a speedy solution to these problems,” Cody said.

The reports also caught the eye of lawmakers on Capitol Hill, with Democratic Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and John Kerry of Massachusetts calling for legislation to improve the situation at Walter Reed.

The Pentagon announced Feb. 20 it would form an independent review group to look at outpatient care and administrative processes at both Walter Reed and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The Army and Navy have both begun separate probes.

No major problems have been identified at the Navy hospital; officials said the probe is largely cautionary. Nor have any concerns been raised about the quality of the actual medical care.

Spc. Nick Helffarich, 22, is intimately familiar with both of the Army’s new concerns at Walter Reed. Helffarich was injured in Mosul, Iraq, during a midnight roadside bomb sweep. The March 7, 2006, explosion left him with a lacerated liver, a broken pelvis, vertebrae and wrist, and lung and ear damage. He’s been at Walter Reed for nearly a year.

For months, he lived where most recovering vets live at Walter Reed: in the on-campus Mologne House, with its curtained, well-appointed lobby, wall sconces and housekeeping service. Both Mologne and Building 18 were once hotels, but clearly from different sides of the tracks. Helffarich moved into Building 18, across the street and south of the main gate, two months ago.

In one respect, he said, the accommodations are “exceptional. … It’s not Iraq.” But he suddenly found himself in a room with a broken shower, no trash can and a cockroach problem. He’s seen mice running in the building.

He’s also just started his medical review board process, and although he’s just a few weeks into it, it already seems slow. “We have a medical board counselor,” he said. “Mine, personally, is really hard to get hold of. I’ve had appointments where I’ve talked to the head manager over there, and she’s like, come in at this time and see your counselor. And I’d go in for my scheduled appointment, and she’s not even there.”

The outpatient process “at times can be very bureaucratic,” Kiley agreed. “It needs to be streamlined. And we are committed to working within this organization, with the rest of the Army, DoD and the Congress, if we need their help, to further improve this process of healing and, where needed, medically retiring soldiers.”

Kiley said he does not consider Building 18 to be “substandard” but acknowledged that it needed work. He said the hospital now has a contracted maintenance service for the facility and repairs should be done by the end of the week. He also announced that within 30 to 60 days, the Army Medical Command will have prepared a plan to perform a major renovation on the building, which will require all 66 troops now staying there to be moved elsewhere “for a long time.”

Kiley said medical leaders have already submitted recommendations on outpatient processes to get “some quick and easy ‘wins’ to start to streamline this thing.”

He said the Army has already added more counselors and stood up more physical disability boards “to help us handle the volume of soldiers that are coming through here.”

He also said officials are re-examining whether to add more case managers so that each sees fewer wounded veterans.

Kiley declined to identify the leadership failures referred to by Cody, saying he first wants an ongoing inquiry to play out. Cody similarly declined to do so at the Feb. 20 press conference but did say, “Appropriate action is being taken to hold the leadership at every level accountable.”

Cody said no one has been relieved of command or fired over the problems. “We will do the right thing across the board as we continue to assess where the leadership failure and breakdowns were,” he said, adding that the problems were not due to a lack of resources.

He said he would personally oversee the upgrading of Building 18 and added that the building's name would soon be changed to something that better reflects the building's mission. “Referring to a place where our soldiers stay as Building 18 is not appropriate,” he said.

Tell us your ideas for renaming Building 18 here.

“We will do what's right for our soldiers and our families,” Cody added. “I will not be satisfied until we have a family assistance center at Walter Reed where it's one stop, it has an ‘easy button’, and families and the soldiers all can take care of their financial issues, their scheduling issues, their follow-up care issues. ... Right now, we're close to that, but it does not meet my standard or the leadership standard.”

Staff writer Kelly Kennedy contributed to this report.

Related reading:

Leaders take blame for wounded care woes

Read the full text of Cody’s message to soldiers

Wounded and waiting: A slow medical evaluation process leaves many injured troops in limbo