Sat, Mar 1, 2008 (2:08 a.m.)

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, considered the military’s premier medical facility, fell under strict scrutiny last year after a series of articles by The Washington Post detailed the dirty conditions, poor medical care and staggering bureaucracy that wounded soldiers faced upon returning home from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This week, auditors for the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, testified during a congressional hearing that medical care at Walter Reed has improved.

But, they added, there remains a lack of oversight and accountability for a pilot program Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department have started to streamline the tangled bureaucratic process through which soldiers sought follow-up care and disability benefits.

The GAO reports that evaluation plans for the pilot program “lack key elements,” including an approach for determining whether the program’s decisions are timely or accurate. In addition, the offices that are supposed to help wounded soldiers navigate the system still lack about a third of the staff needed. The shortage is a result of the difficulties associated with “hiring medical staff in a competitive market” and finding permanent workers to replace temporary ones, the GAO says.

It is clear from the GAO’s assessment that the lack of adequate administrative oversight, poor staffing and a generally unfinished plan for reforming the Army’s medical care system — some of the same problems that led to the deterioration of care at Walter Reed — still exist.

Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., chairman of the House subcommittee on oversight and government reform that heard the GAO’s report, says there is “legitimate concern that we may end up ... right back at the beginning.” He warned that such missteps likely will continue “unless there is the political will and resolve to fundamentally improve the system.”

The United States has been at war in Iraq for five years. The time for figuring out how to effectively and compassionately treat U.S. soldiers wounded in service to their country is long overdue.