Chambliss Urges Continued Collaboration between Augusta Medical Facilities and the Department of Defense To Enhance Wounded Warrior Care and Recovery Coordinator Training

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Chambliss Urges Continued Collaboration between Augusta Medical Facilities and the Department of Defense To Enhance Wounded Warrior Care and Recovery Coordinator Training

U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today urged continued focus on improvements implemented and planned by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the care, management, and transition of wounded and ill service members. During an Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill this morning, Chambliss asked the Secretary of the Army, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel to elaborate on how Georgia's Augusta area can be further enhanced as a center of excellence for wounded warrior care.

"Many people in Augusta are working hard to establish their city as a center of excellence for wounded warrior care and to enhance collaboration between the Eisenhower Medical Center at Fort Gordon, the Medical College of Georgia, and the Charlie Norwood VA," said Chambliss. "We have a great opportunity to further the already outstanding reputation the Augusta area has established in caring for our military personnel," said Chambliss, who noted that civic leaders in the Augusta area, including former WRDW News 12 TV anchor and reporter, Laurie Ott, and former Congressman Doug Barnard, established the Wounded Warrior Care Project and have developed a proposal to establish a training program for Wounded Warrior "Federal Recovery Coordinators" at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) Nursing School in Augusta.

One of the primary recommendations of President Bush's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors, chaired by former Senator Bob Dole and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, was to establish Recovery Coordinators to serve as the single point of contact for patients and families during the recovery and transition process. The Department of Defense has agreed to hire 80 of these coordinators and will likely hire many more. The MCG Nursing School is proposing a six month certificate program for training these coordinators which would be an extension of their current program of training Clinical Nurse Leaders for which they have an existing degree program. During today's hearing, Senator Chambliss encouraged the Defense Department to work with the MCG Nursing School to see how their proposal could meet the Department's requirement for training Recovery Coordinators.

Senator Chambliss has been an advocate for the care of wounded warriors and co-authored several provisions to enhance their quality of life in the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, which the President signed into law in January.

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