SIDE BAR

May 2005

Guard and Reserve Wounded Left Behind

By Joe Pappalardo

An Army Guard and Reserve program designed to support wounded soldiers is so overwhelmed by the pace of deployments that injured personnel lost medical care because of their change in status, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.

“Many of the case-study soldiers incurred severe, permanent injuries fighting for their country including loss of limb, hearing loss and back injuries,” stated the GAO report, released in February. “Nonetheless, these soldiers had to navigate the convoluted and poorly defined process for extending active-duty service.”

The Active Duty Medical Extension program, set up in July 2000 for reservists injured while on active duty or in training, only had a staff of three when wounded reservists flooded the office, leading to long delays. Injured soldiers looking to extend their active-duty status, in order to continue getting care to which they were entitled, were lost in the system’s delays, and had to pay for care themselves. The number of soldiers who experienced this bureaucratic blunder is unknown, both to the GAO and the Department of Defense.

Even worse, the program installed to fix the problem may be plagued with other woes, the report stated, leading to the overpayment to some soldiers.

The Army recently implemented the Medical Retention Processing (MRP) program, which takes the place of the medical extension program. MRP authorizes an automatic 179 days of pay and benefits, resolving many of the processing delays experienced by soldiers.

GAO only briefly studied the new program, but found flaws including overpayment. “Out of 132 soldiers the Army identified as being released from active duty, 15 received pay past their release date—totaling approximately $62,000,” the report stated.

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