Conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center

CONDITIONS AT WALTER REED ARMY MEDICAL CENTER

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Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend for yielding, and with that kind of introduction, I will just shut up and sit down. I thank him for that very kind introduction.

I just got back from Iraq with Congressmen Dan Boren and Ken Calvert and Randy Neugebauer. We were at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany, which is the first place where our wounded soldiers and marines are taken after they have been wounded on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. They are stabilized and treated there, and then they are flown back to Walter Reed and Bethesda.

We went over the new technologies that are being utilized right now and the new focus being put on our wounded soldiers. Let me tell you, that operation is first class.

One thing, and the gentleman talked about Walter Reed and I thought it might be appropriate to bring up an issue that all Members of this body can participate in and help in, and it is this: last year I started in San Diego in Balboa Hospital, which is where a lot of our wounded marines are, and in Walter Reed. We started these forums for getting jobs for our guys and ladies who have gone through their therapy, they are being separated from the service, they have been wounded and they are going to go back into the private sector.

So one thing that I thought we would do out in Balboa, and we did one of them here at Walter Reed, was to bring in people from industry and introduce them to our wounded soldiers and marines and try to help get them jobs. Hopefully, a young marine would stand up and say I am a generator mechanic from such and such a town in Vermont or Maine or California or Iowa, and we would be able to match them up with a company that might need such a talent in their company.

So we started doing that, and the first session I had was in the dayroom in Balboa Hospital in San Diego, and we actually had CEOs from major corporations in the dayroom and the marines all came in and told us what they did and introduced themselves, and we immediately had a number of people hired right there at that point in time.

Well, I got back, and the Armed Services staff told me you may be breaking the law.

I said, What are you talking about?

They said, We have talked to the ethics lawyers on the Hill and there may be a question if a Member of Congress tries to help somebody get a job with private industry. There is the implication that reciprocal treatment will be required at some point: you are getting a favor and you will give a favor back.

I said, What can we do?

They said, You need legislation that will end up with the Ethics Committee and House Administration Committee expressly permitting Members of Congress to help get jobs for our wounded soldiers and marines.

So last year, a month or two before we broke, we passed a resolution in the full House urging the Ethics Committee and the House Administration Committee to give us express permission to get jobs for our wounded folks. Every Member of the House can help us on this. I know that Vic Snyder who heads up the Personnel Subcommittee on the great Armed Services Committee and John McHugh are very much supportive of this.

Hopefully, we will get this recommendation up before the Ethics Committee and the House Administration Committee. At that point I can see this entire House of Representatives doing great work because you can take a young man or woman from a town in America who has had an injury and gone through rehab and is looking to go into the private sector. A lot are staying with the service, but the ones that aren't staying with the service, we could call up the Congressman from that particular district that young person is going back to and find out if there is a company that needs that generator mechanic or that young man or woman who is interested in law enforcement or some other profession.

So I think there is a lot of opportunities here and I look forward to working with you and with the great gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes) and all of our colleagues to try to put this together.

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Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will yield further, nobody knows the companies and the businesses in their district better than a Member of Congress, and so I think if we can just pass this little provision in the Ethics Committee that will allow us to do it, we will be able to call up a Member of Congress from whatever district the young man or young woman has a residence in, find out what particular companies have disciplines in the area of occupation that this person specializes in. I think we can marry them up and get some jobs pretty quick.

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Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely. The one thing that we have learned is that when people get concussions, there may be a lasting effect on those concussions, and we talked to several concussion specialists who now are focusing on Landstuhl and when the young people come back, especially when they have been attacked by IEDs, by weapons systems that have a blast effect, to have a new focus on the after effects of having concussions, and so that is something that is being done right now.

Typically, in the old days, it was done, of course, in sports medicine, for example, guys that were boxers or played football and took numerous hits, and the effect of numerous concussions was studied and was followed.

What we are focusing on here is, you have been in an IED attack or you have had a mortar attack that is close and that gives a concussive effect, it is important to monitor that individual for an extended period of time, not just figure, okay, he was knocked out or she was knocked out, but now they are fine. Monitor them for a period of time. So we have a new focus there in Landstuhl and that focus, it was important to Mr. Neugebauer especially, and DAN BOREN and Mr. Calvert, who were on the trip with me, were all very interested in making sure that the information that is derived from observation of a patient who newly comes in, comes in and is stabilized there, that then is sent to Walter Reed and to Bethesda so there can be follow-up work so that we can treat the entire patient, and maybe that patient has a fragment wound, making sure that you take care of that, but at the same time make sure that we monitor the effects of concussions, which can in some cases have a lasting effect.

So it is just one example of new focuses and new technologies that are being placed on our wounded soldiers, and the folks there do a great job.

To go to Walter Reed for a minute and this problem we have with the outpatient, the inpatient care is good at Walter Reed. In fact, I was with a wounded Marine and a wounded soldier and it was either the same day or day or two before the story in the Washington Post broke. We have great inpatient capability there. What we have got to have is we have got to have what I would call a family friendly system that is consumer friendly and consumer easy, so that that 22-year-old wife of a Marine corporal, who is undergoing therapy there at Walter Reed and doing rehab there, so that it is easy to walk through the bureaucracy.

So we build these bureaucracies. We inadvertently build them, like the one we built up that says now you cannot get a job for a wounded person or you are violating an ethics rule. We get sometimes so twisted and tied up in this multiplicity of rules that we end up losing sight of the real goals of what we are here for.

So I think we need to make this a consumer friendly system for a person who has got a lot of things on their mind and maybe has some kids back home and they are coming several hundred miles to get rehab treatment or therapy can easily and quickly walk through the system without having to go through a phonebook thick of regulations and sign a million dotted lines.

That is something we can do, one-stop shopping that is easy and simple. That is not bad to have throughout the Federal bureaucracy, but especially when you have military families that have a lot of problems and a lot of things on their mind, we need to have a customer friendly system. That is what we need to develop.

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