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IG finds 87 problems with medical retirement

The Army’s Inspector General, in the midst of a yearlong, ongoing probe of the service’s medical retirement system, has so far identified 87 problems that need to be fixed, the Army announced Saturday morning.

The Inspector General, according to Army spokesman Paul Boyce, found inconsistent training for counselors helping soldiers through the system, inadequate record keeping and a failure to follow policy pushed down from the Defense Department — all findings that Army Times has reported on since June 2006.

Read June 2006 story

Boyce said Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey also called for a plan to improve the situation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He said the plan will:

• Ensure soldiers’ health and welfare.

• Improve the infrastructure of worn-down buildings.

• Streamline the medical administrative process.

• Better distribute information about the system.

Boyce said Army Gen. Richard Cody put a 30-day deadline on several of the pieces of the plan.

The Defense Department also will be looking at the processes for all services to make sure they fall in line with Defense Department policy after a Government Accountability Office report showed there were inconsistencies among the branches.

Boyce said the Army already had recognized problems in the system last spring, and they had been studying those issues since then. Army officials also have acknowledged the influx of cases from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan overwhelmed the system and that the Army has not met its own case-processing times.

Boyce said the Inspector General’s office talked with 650 soldiers and employees at 32 posts over the past year but that the Army would not wait for the final results of the report to make changes to the system.

Related reading:

• Awarding disability pay: Comparing DoD vs. VA systems

• Tour reveals renovations under way at Walter Reed

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