Military leaders promising progress on disability claims

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Military leaders promising progress on disability claims
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, February 16, 2008

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials acknowledged this week that massive overhauls are still needed to make the military’s disability claims system easier to navigate and less confrontational.

“I can tell you one of the most difficult aspects of being at Walter Reed this last year … was standing in front of patients and families and feeling I was the enemy,” Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, head of Army Medical Command, told House lawmakers on Friday.

“That is a direct outflow of what a divisive and antagonistic system our disability process has become.”

Commissions studying the current system last year criticized the process for creating long waits for patients, repetitive exams and paperwork, and inconsistencies in evaluations of injuries.

Defense officials responded in November with a pilot program consolidating all of the medical checks into a single evaluation performed by Department of Veterans Affairs personnel, with the goal of giving patients quicker answers to whether they can stay in the service and for which veterans’ benefits they will be eligible.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52525