Editorial: Healing a hospital

Monday, April 16, 2007 | 7:33 a.m.

Leadership failures, inadequate training and staff shortages led to the dilapidated conditions and tangled bureaucracy that burdened wounded soldiers being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, an independent federal panel has concluded.

The Independent Review Group is a panel that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appointed in February to investigate problems that had been reported in a series of stories in The Washington Post.

For at least three years, some wounded soldiers have been housed across the street from the hospital in an outpatient facility that had moldy walls and was infested with rats and mice. Other patients reported disorganized bookkeeping in which medical records were lost or mishandled. The staff even lost track of wounded patients, who wandered the grounds aimlessly or simply left .

Bush administration officials acted swiftly, but only after the Post revealed the problems . Gates assembled the investigation panel, and, by the second week of March, Walter Reed's commander had been relieved of his post, the Army's surgeon general was fired and the Army secretary had resigned.

Even before the panel had completed its investigation, patients had been moved out of Walter Reed's worst outpatient areas, and additional staff has been added.

Still, the Independent Review Group's summary of its report, released Wednesday, criticizes the hospital's leadership, which the panel says "should have been aware of poor living conditions and administrative hurdles" and "failed to place proper priority on solutions."

The panel characterized the hospital's process for assessing soldiers' disabilities as "extremely cumbersome, inconsistent and confusing." Additionally, the panel found that injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan faced a "breakdown in health services" and that Walter Reed's overworked staff routinely exhibited "compassion fatigue."

It seems Gates is making good on his promise to end years of neglect and nightmarish administrative failures at the Army's top medical facility. It's about time. With President Bush sending thousands more troops into the bloody and disorganized Iraq war, Walter Reed will continue to receive a steady stream of wounded. It cannot be stressed enough that this hospital must be equipped to treat these returning soldiers with competence and compassion.