Editorial: Healing a system

Monday, April 2, 2007 | 7:11 a.m.

President Bush toured Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday, awarding Purple Hearts to wounded soldiers and apologizing for the poor conditions and neglectful care that has persisted at the Army's top veterans hospital for at least three years.

Bush shook hands with soldiers and held their infant children, the Associated Press reported. He also vowed to "fix the problem" that allowed shoddy conditions, such as moldy walls and vermin infestation, to occur at Walter Reed's outpatient facility, and promised to untangle the bureaucratic web that allowed medical records - and even patients - to be lost or unaccounted for.

It was about time. It has been six weeks since The Washington Post's series of stories that first revealed the widespread problems at the Army's premier medical facility. By the second week of March, Army Maj. Gen. George Weightman had been relieved of his command of Walter Reed, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey had been forced to resign and Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army's surgeon general, had been fired by the new acting Army secretary.

During Bush's visit on Friday, which was an hour shorter than scheduled, the president also toured an empty patient room and the main physical therapy unit. But he failed to visit the now-infamous Building 18, the hospital's mental health ward or the outpatient holding areas where wounded soldiers face long waits and paperwork.

A report released last month by the Government Accountability Office, the investigating arm of Congress, says wounded troops aren't getting into rehabilitation soon enough because the Defense Department is slow in transferring active military medical records to the Veterans Affairs system. Apparently, Walter Reed isn't the only part of the Defense Department's health care system that needs fixing. And it just isn't clear how Bush, who failed to tour the most broken parts of just one hospital, can "fix" that which he refuses to see.