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Rep.: Medical record-keeping better in Iraq

The military has made dramatic improvements in having electronic medical records accompany service members injured in combat but has not yet overcome a problem with having those records compatible with the Department of Veterans Affairs, says the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., who has just returned from his first trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, said he and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson traveled together to follow the path a wounded service member takes from the time they are injured until they are returned to the U.S. Overall, he said in a Tuesday interview, he was impressed by military medical care.

“It was really interesting and emotional,” said Filner, who became the veterans’ committee chairman in January but who has never served in the military. “You see all of these young kids doing incredible things.”

Filner has been no fan of the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy, and he said nothing he saw changed his mind.

“I don’t think the policymakers are worthy of their sacrifice,” he said of the service members he met with on the trip.

Last year, Nicholson and Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., made the same type of trip and came away concerned about military medical records. Buyer, who was the veterans’ committee chairman at the time, said he and Nicholson watched injured soldiers being unloaded from aircraft in Germany who had their paper medical records clutched to their chests — a process fraught with the potential to lose or misplace pages that could be important to their medical care and qualify them for future disability benefits.

Now, the military collects information into electronic records that will follow the service members from their first treatment to their final treatment. Filner said he and Nicholson followed the process from as “far forward as they would let us” to Germany, and plan to later visit military hospitals in the U.S. to follow up on the treatment of some of the service members they observed.

Filner said there has been progress within the military. The next problem is getting the military to have electronic records that are easily and immediately available at veterans’ hospitals and clinics, when combat veterans need care after leaving active duty.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is providing post-combat health care for National Guard and reserve combat veterans who may not live near military or veterans’ hospitals, Filner said.

“There is still a lot to do,” he said.