Panel calls for 'complete overhaul' at Walter Reed

WASHINGTON — An independent panel assessing dilapidated facilities and red tape for wounded Iraq war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Wednesday issued a sweeping indictment of leadership failures, inadequate training and staffing shortages.

The panel, headed by two former secretaries of the Army, Togo D. West Jr. and John O. Marsh Jr., found that a high standard of care for troops when they are first evacuated from war zones and hospitalized falls apart when they become outpatients, with a "breakdown in health services" and "compassion fatigue" on the part of overworked staff.

The report called the current system for assessing soldiers' disabilities "extremely cumbersome, inconsistent and confusing," saying it must be "completely overhauled."

It called for the creation of a "center of excellence" on treatment, training and research on two conditions suffered by thousands of troops in Iraq: traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The panel, called the Independent Review Group, was appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in February after The Washington Post reported on the problems at Walter Reed, the Army's century-old Washington medical center. A presidential commission and a Department of Veterans Affairs task force are also assessing the troubles.

The conditions at Walter Reed, including moldy, rat-infested quarters and a bureaucratic maze that left severely injured soldiers in limbo for months, have become a symbol of the government's broader failure to help troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The initial reports in February led to the firing of Walter Reed's commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman, and the resignation of his successor, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army surgeon general.

West, a former military lawyer who served as both secretary of the Army and secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Bill Clinton, blasted the tortuous bureaucracy that assesses soldiers' disabilities. "We can and must do better," he said.