Date: 11/25/2008
By JIM SUHR
Associated Press Writer
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) _ A widow whose husband died at a Veterans Affairs hospital under fire for substandard care has agreed to settle her lawsuit against the government for $975,000, her attorney said.
Katrina Shank had sought $12 million in her federal wrongful-death lawsuit. Her husband, 50-year-old Robert Shank III of Murray, Ky., bled to death in August 2007, a day after undergoing gallbladder surgery at the VA hospital in Marion, Ill.
Shank’s widow claimed the government failed to sufficiently check the background of her husband’s surgeon, Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, before hiring him in January 2006.
Veizaga-Mendez resigned three days after Robert Shank’s death, and major surgeries were ordered halted there after inspectors attributed several patient deaths to questionable surgical care.
Terms involving Katrina Shank’s settlement were not disclosed in court documents, though an e-mail to The Associated Press by one of her attorneys, Stan Heller, put the amount at $975,000.
A message seeking comment was left Tuesday with spokesman for the national VA. According to an order by U.S. District Judge J. Phil Gilbert, the settlement becomes final after 90 days unless it hits a snag.
The VA found at least nine deaths between October 2006 and March 2007 were “directly attributable” to substandard care at the hospital. Those deaths did not include Robert Shank, who died months later.
The VA’s findings do not put the sole blame on Veizaga-Mendez, but Shank’s lawsuit said many or all of those who died were his patients.
At least one other lawsuit involving care by Veizaga-Mendez at the hospital is pending. James Marshall, 61, of Benton, Ky., died of a blood infection in July 2007, six days after Veizaga-Mendez performed a lymph node biopsy. His widow, Darla Marshall, is seeking $10 million in damages.
Veizaga-Mendez, who is not listed as a defendant in the lawsuits, has no listed telephone number and has not responded to repeated messages left by the AP at a Massachusetts home listed as an address for his wife.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
General bucks culture of silence on mental health
Date: 11/8/2008
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) _ It takes a brave soldier to do what Army Maj. Gen. David Blackledge did in Iraq.
It takes as much bravery to do what he did when he got home.
Blackledge got psychiatric counseling to deal with wartime trauma, and now he is defying the military’s culture of silence on the subject of mental health problems and treatment.
“It’s part of our profession … nobody wants to admit that they’ve got a weakness in this area,” Blackledge said of mental health problems among troops returning from America’s two wars.
“I have dealt with it. I’m dealing with it now,” said Blackledge, who came home with post-traumatic stress. “We need to be able to talk about it.”
As the nation marks another Veterans Day, thousands of troops are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with anxiety, depression and other emotional problems.
Up to 20 percent of the more than 1.7 million who’ve served in the wars are estimated to have symptoms. In a sign of how tough it may be to change attitudes, roughly half of those who need help aren’t seeking it, studies have found.
Despite efforts to reduce the stigma of getting treatment, officials say they fear generals and other senior leaders remain unwilling to go for help, much less talk about it, partly because they fear it will hurt chances for promotion.
That reluctance is also worrisome because it sends the wrong signal to younger officers and perpetuates the problem leaders are working to reverse.
“Stigma is a challenge,” Army Secretary Pete Geren said Friday at a Pentagon news conference on troop health care. “It’s a challenge in society in general. It’s certainly a challenge in the culture of the Army, where we have a premium on strength, physically, mentally, emotionally.”
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked leaders earlier this year to set an example for all soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines: “You can’t expect a private or a specialist to be willing to seek counseling when his or her captain or colonel or general won’t do it.”
Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, an Army psychiatrist heading the defense center for psychological health and traumatic brain injury, is developing a campaign in which people will tell their personal stories. Troops, their families and others also will share concerns and ideas through Web links and other programs. Blackledge volunteered to help, and next week he and his wife, Iwona, an Air Force nurse, will speak on the subject at a medical conference.
A two-star Army Reserve general, 54-year-old Blackledge commanded a civil affairs unit on two tours to Iraq, and now works in the Pentagon as Army assistant deputy chief of staff for mobilization and reserve issues.
His convoy was ambushed in February 2004, during his first deployment. In the event that he’s since relived in flashbacks and recurring nightmares, Blackledge’s interpreter was shot through the head, his vehicle rolled over several times and Blackledge crawled out of it with a crushed vertebrae and broken ribs. He found himself in the middle of a firefight, and he and other survivors took cover in a ditch.
He said he was visited by a psychiatrist within days after arriving at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He had several sessions with the doctor over his 11 months of recovery and physical therapy for his injuries.
“He really helped me,” Blackledge said. And that’s his message to troops.
“I tell them that I’ve learned to deal with it,” he said. “It’s become part of who I am.”
He still has bad dreams about once a week but no longer wakes from them in a sweat, and they are no longer as unsettling.
On his second tour to Iraq, Blackledge traveled to neighboring Jordan to work with local officials on Iraq border issues, and he was in an Amman hotel in November 2005 when suicide bombers attacked, killing some 60 and wounding hundreds.
Blackledge got a whiplash injury that took months to heal. The experience, including a harrowing escape from the chaotic scene, rekindled his post-traumatic stress symptoms, though they weren’t as strong as those he’d suffered after the 2004 ambush.
Officials across the service branches have taken steps over the last year to make getting help easier and more discreet, such as embedding mental health teams into units.
They see signs that stigma has been slowly easing. But it’s likely a change that will take generations.
Last year, 29 percent of troops with symptoms said they feared seeking help would hurt their careers, down from 34 percent the previous year, according to an Army survey. Nearly half feared they’d be seen as weak, down from 53 percent.
The majority of troops who get help are able to get better and to remain on the job.
___
Associated Press writer Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
Information on veterans health care: www.warriorcare.mil
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) _ It takes a brave soldier to do what Army Maj. Gen. David Blackledge did in Iraq.
It takes as much bravery to do what he did when he got home.
Blackledge got psychiatric counseling to deal with wartime trauma, and now he is defying the military’s culture of silence on the subject of mental health problems and treatment.
“It’s part of our profession … nobody wants to admit that they’ve got a weakness in this area,” Blackledge said of mental health problems among troops returning from America’s two wars.
“I have dealt with it. I’m dealing with it now,” said Blackledge, who came home with post-traumatic stress. “We need to be able to talk about it.”
As the nation marks another Veterans Day, thousands of troops are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with anxiety, depression and other emotional problems.
Up to 20 percent of the more than 1.7 million who’ve served in the wars are estimated to have symptoms. In a sign of how tough it may be to change attitudes, roughly half of those who need help aren’t seeking it, studies have found.
Despite efforts to reduce the stigma of getting treatment, officials say they fear generals and other senior leaders remain unwilling to go for help, much less talk about it, partly because they fear it will hurt chances for promotion.
That reluctance is also worrisome because it sends the wrong signal to younger officers and perpetuates the problem leaders are working to reverse.
“Stigma is a challenge,” Army Secretary Pete Geren said Friday at a Pentagon news conference on troop health care. “It’s a challenge in society in general. It’s certainly a challenge in the culture of the Army, where we have a premium on strength, physically, mentally, emotionally.”
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked leaders earlier this year to set an example for all soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines: “You can’t expect a private or a specialist to be willing to seek counseling when his or her captain or colonel or general won’t do it.”
Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, an Army psychiatrist heading the defense center for psychological health and traumatic brain injury, is developing a campaign in which people will tell their personal stories. Troops, their families and others also will share concerns and ideas through Web links and other programs. Blackledge volunteered to help, and next week he and his wife, Iwona, an Air Force nurse, will speak on the subject at a medical conference.
A two-star Army Reserve general, 54-year-old Blackledge commanded a civil affairs unit on two tours to Iraq, and now works in the Pentagon as Army assistant deputy chief of staff for mobilization and reserve issues.
His convoy was ambushed in February 2004, during his first deployment. In the event that he’s since relived in flashbacks and recurring nightmares, Blackledge’s interpreter was shot through the head, his vehicle rolled over several times and Blackledge crawled out of it with a crushed vertebrae and broken ribs. He found himself in the middle of a firefight, and he and other survivors took cover in a ditch.
He said he was visited by a psychiatrist within days after arriving at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He had several sessions with the doctor over his 11 months of recovery and physical therapy for his injuries.
“He really helped me,” Blackledge said. And that’s his message to troops.
“I tell them that I’ve learned to deal with it,” he said. “It’s become part of who I am.”
He still has bad dreams about once a week but no longer wakes from them in a sweat, and they are no longer as unsettling.
On his second tour to Iraq, Blackledge traveled to neighboring Jordan to work with local officials on Iraq border issues, and he was in an Amman hotel in November 2005 when suicide bombers attacked, killing some 60 and wounding hundreds.
Blackledge got a whiplash injury that took months to heal. The experience, including a harrowing escape from the chaotic scene, rekindled his post-traumatic stress symptoms, though they weren’t as strong as those he’d suffered after the 2004 ambush.
Officials across the service branches have taken steps over the last year to make getting help easier and more discreet, such as embedding mental health teams into units.
They see signs that stigma has been slowly easing. But it’s likely a change that will take generations.
Last year, 29 percent of troops with symptoms said they feared seeking help would hurt their careers, down from 34 percent the previous year, according to an Army survey. Nearly half feared they’d be seen as weak, down from 53 percent.
The majority of troops who get help are able to get better and to remain on the job.
___
Associated Press writer Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
Information on veterans health care: www.warriorcare.mil
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Wounded Warriors
Date: 11/2/2008 5:21 PM
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writer
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — In a rush to correct reports of substandard care for wounded soldiers, the Army flung open the doors of new specialized treatment centers so wide that up to half the soldiers currently enrolled do not have injuries serious enough to justify being there, The Associated Press has learned.
Army leaders are putting in place stricter screening procedures to stem the flood of patients overwhelming the units — a move that eventually will target some for closure.
According to interviews and data provided to the AP, the number of patients admitted to the 36 Warrior Transition Units and nine other community-based units jumped from about 5,000 in June 2007, when they began, to a peak of nearly 12,500 in June 2008.
The units provide coordinated medical and mental health care, track soldiers’ recovery and provide broader legal, financial and other family counseling. They serve Army active duty and reserve soldiers.
Just 12 percent of the soldiers in the units had battlefield injuries while thousands of others had minor problems that did not require the complex new network of case managers, nurses and doctors, according to Brig. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, the director of the Army’s warrior care office.
The overcrowding was a “self-inflicted wound,” said Cheek, who also is an assistant surgeon general. “We’re dedicating this kind of oversight and management where, truthfully, only half of those soldiers really needed this.”
Cheek said it is difficult to tell how many patients eventually will be in the units. But he said soldiers currently admitted will not be tossed out if they do not meet the new standards. Instead, the tighter screening will weed out the population over time.
“We’re trying change it back,” to serve patients who have more serious or multiple injuries that require about six months or more of coordinated treatment, he said.
By restricting use of the coordinated care units to soldiers with more complex, long-term ailments, the Army hopes in the long run to close or consolidate as many as 10 of the transition units, Cheek said during an interview in his Virginia office near the Pentagon.
In the past, a soldier with a torn knee ligament would have surgery and then go on light duty, such as answering phones, while getting physical therapy. But last October, the Army began allowing soldiers with less serious injuries such as that bad knee to go to the warrior units.
The expansion came in the wake of reports about poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., including shoddy housing and bureaucratic delays for outpatients there.
Brigade commanders began shipping to the transition centers anyone in their unit who could not deploy because of an injury or illness. That burdened the system with soldiers who really did not need case managers to set up their appointments, nurses to check their medications and other specialists to provide counseling for issues such as stress disorders.
The Army’s goal now, as spelled out in a recent briefing given to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is to screen out those who do not need the expanded care program, shifting them to regular medical facilities at their military base or near their homes.
Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, said the Pentagon is making a fair argument. He acknowledged that some soldiers with less serious injuries might not need the units’ services.
But he said commanders need to be able to move their soldiers who cannot deploy due to an injury to the units because that is the only way they can get a replacement before going to war. Otherwise, the brigade goes to battle without the forces needed.
“The larger concern here is that the problem that is driving this is the manpower problem,” said Soltz. “The Army is overextended. We don’t have enough guys.”
It is vital, he said, that the medical system care for all the solders who need help and that any changes should not threaten that care.
Raymond F. DuBois, a former acting undersecretary of the Army and manpower adviser under then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said the units address “a problem that was not made aware at the highest levels” and do it well. But he has worried for months that the units were overstretched.
“Guess what? They did it so well everybody wants in,” said DuBois, now an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Cheek stressed that the new more stringent screening process will not deny care to soldiers in need or limit the treatment units to those with battle wounds.
“We don’t really care about the source of the wound, illness or injury. We really care about the severity of the wound, illness or injury,” said Cheek. “So if it’s a severe, very acute condition that needs rehabilitation and a lot of management and oversight, regardless of where it comes form, that soldier needs to be in this program.”
The latest data shows that it is working: The patient load is starting to inch down, from the peak of 12,478 in June to less than 11,400 in October.
Cheek estimates that the screening process will reduce the number to between 8,000 and 10,000.
As those numbers come down, the Army is also reviewing which units get more use. The list of potential closings include warrior transition units at Fort Rucker and Redstone Arsenal, in Alabama; Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; Fort Dix in New Jersey; and Fort Irwin in California. According to Army data, many of them either have only a dozen or so patients now, or can be combined with another nearby facility.
At Fort Campbell in Kentucky, however, more than 600 soldiers are in the treatment program. Staff there are bracing for a surge of patients when the three 101st Airborne Division brigades start returning home in the coming months.
Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, toured the unit in late October. He gathered more than two dozen staff around a long table to hear their concerns about how the program is operating. Afterward he marveled that they talked not about their own administrative complaints, but about specific problems they were trying to solve for their patients.
In a small office down the hall, Lisa Gaines was blunt about what the unit meant to her.
“It’s done wonders for our family,” said the mother of five.
Seated next to her, Spc. Sean Gaines nodded quietly as his wife talked about the strains his injury had on the family and how the staff worked to heal all wounds — physical and emotional.
Deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, cavalry scout Gaines was shaken but not bloodied by the blasts of several car bombs and a house explosion. Yet when he returned home, he began having pain and his body went numb. The medical diagnosis was a crushed cervical disc — an injury he got either in Iraq or in training, only to surface later.
After surgery in October 2007, he came to Fort Campbell’s warrior transition unit — but he needed more than physical therapy. He had been told he could no longer serve as a scout.
“He loves the Army, he loves the military. For them to tell him he could no longer be a scout, it was difficult. It was a strain,” recounted Lisa Gaines. He was agitated, angry and withdrawn, she said.
In response, the warrior unit gave him underwater training as therapy for his injury, coupled with family counseling, budget management and career help.
“I realized I had options, I could continue to serve,” said Sean Gaines, who soon will leave the transition unit and take on a new Army job doing transportation management.
The counseling gave him time to figure out his options, come to terms with the change, and understand that he could either “drive on or prepare to exit,” he said.
He decided to go on, saying, “I am not going to be a scout, but I will still be part of a team.”
According to Army data, the key struggle is keeping the transition units fully staffed. In many of the more remote locations, Army leaders have trouble finding enough nurse case managers. As of the end of September, 12 of the units based at military posts were short those case managers.
Other locations, such as Fort Drum, N.Y., do not have enough behavioral health specialists.
Closing some of the locations may help ease those shortages, Cheek said.
“It shouldn’t be too surprising,” he said. “We’re 18 months old here, so now it’s time for us to relook at how we’re doing this, and where we can gain some efficiencies.”
He added that an order coming out in December will further refine the screening criteria for the transition units. In particular, it will call for the Army to identify other ways to provide care for reservists so they can receive the treatment they need closer to their homes, which often are far from large military bases.
The Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, has made it clear that any soldier who needs the coordinated care must get it, regardless of how many soldiers end up in the program.
Meanwhile, officials are building permanent care centers at the main bases over the next several years, at a cost of more than $1 billion. Annual operating costs are about $270 million, with the staff of about 3,000 consuming most of that expense.
Nearly 40,000 service members have been wounded in action in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as of Friday, although more than 18,000 returned to duty within 72 hours of their injuries, according to Defense Department data.
___
On the Net:
Warrior Care: http://www.warriorcare.mil/
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Summary
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writer
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — In a rush to correct reports of substandard care for wounded soldiers, the Army flung open the doors of new specialized treatment centers so wide that up to half the soldiers currently enrolled do not have injuries serious enough to justify being there, The Associated Press has learned.
Army leaders are putting in place stricter screening procedures to stem the flood of patients overwhelming the units — a move that eventually will target some for closure.
According to interviews and data provided to the AP, the number of patients admitted to the 36 Warrior Transition Units and nine other community-based units jumped from about 5,000 in June 2007, when they began, to a peak of nearly 12,500 in June 2008.
The units provide coordinated medical and mental health care, track soldiers’ recovery and provide broader legal, financial and other family counseling. They serve Army active duty and reserve soldiers.
Just 12 percent of the soldiers in the units had battlefield injuries while thousands of others had minor problems that did not require the complex new network of case managers, nurses and doctors, according to Brig. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, the director of the Army’s warrior care office.
The overcrowding was a “self-inflicted wound,” said Cheek, who also is an assistant surgeon general. “We’re dedicating this kind of oversight and management where, truthfully, only half of those soldiers really needed this.”
Cheek said it is difficult to tell how many patients eventually will be in the units. But he said soldiers currently admitted will not be tossed out if they do not meet the new standards. Instead, the tighter screening will weed out the population over time.
“We’re trying change it back,” to serve patients who have more serious or multiple injuries that require about six months or more of coordinated treatment, he said.
By restricting use of the coordinated care units to soldiers with more complex, long-term ailments, the Army hopes in the long run to close or consolidate as many as 10 of the transition units, Cheek said during an interview in his Virginia office near the Pentagon.
In the past, a soldier with a torn knee ligament would have surgery and then go on light duty, such as answering phones, while getting physical therapy. But last October, the Army began allowing soldiers with less serious injuries such as that bad knee to go to the warrior units.
The expansion came in the wake of reports about poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., including shoddy housing and bureaucratic delays for outpatients there.
Brigade commanders began shipping to the transition centers anyone in their unit who could not deploy because of an injury or illness. That burdened the system with soldiers who really did not need case managers to set up their appointments, nurses to check their medications and other specialists to provide counseling for issues such as stress disorders.
The Army’s goal now, as spelled out in a recent briefing given to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is to screen out those who do not need the expanded care program, shifting them to regular medical facilities at their military base or near their homes.
Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, said the Pentagon is making a fair argument. He acknowledged that some soldiers with less serious injuries might not need the units’ services.
But he said commanders need to be able to move their soldiers who cannot deploy due to an injury to the units because that is the only way they can get a replacement before going to war. Otherwise, the brigade goes to battle without the forces needed.
“The larger concern here is that the problem that is driving this is the manpower problem,” said Soltz. “The Army is overextended. We don’t have enough guys.”
It is vital, he said, that the medical system care for all the solders who need help and that any changes should not threaten that care.
Raymond F. DuBois, a former acting undersecretary of the Army and manpower adviser under then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said the units address “a problem that was not made aware at the highest levels” and do it well. But he has worried for months that the units were overstretched.
“Guess what? They did it so well everybody wants in,” said DuBois, now an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Cheek stressed that the new more stringent screening process will not deny care to soldiers in need or limit the treatment units to those with battle wounds.
“We don’t really care about the source of the wound, illness or injury. We really care about the severity of the wound, illness or injury,” said Cheek. “So if it’s a severe, very acute condition that needs rehabilitation and a lot of management and oversight, regardless of where it comes form, that soldier needs to be in this program.”
The latest data shows that it is working: The patient load is starting to inch down, from the peak of 12,478 in June to less than 11,400 in October.
Cheek estimates that the screening process will reduce the number to between 8,000 and 10,000.
As those numbers come down, the Army is also reviewing which units get more use. The list of potential closings include warrior transition units at Fort Rucker and Redstone Arsenal, in Alabama; Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; Fort Dix in New Jersey; and Fort Irwin in California. According to Army data, many of them either have only a dozen or so patients now, or can be combined with another nearby facility.
At Fort Campbell in Kentucky, however, more than 600 soldiers are in the treatment program. Staff there are bracing for a surge of patients when the three 101st Airborne Division brigades start returning home in the coming months.
Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, toured the unit in late October. He gathered more than two dozen staff around a long table to hear their concerns about how the program is operating. Afterward he marveled that they talked not about their own administrative complaints, but about specific problems they were trying to solve for their patients.
In a small office down the hall, Lisa Gaines was blunt about what the unit meant to her.
“It’s done wonders for our family,” said the mother of five.
Seated next to her, Spc. Sean Gaines nodded quietly as his wife talked about the strains his injury had on the family and how the staff worked to heal all wounds — physical and emotional.
Deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, cavalry scout Gaines was shaken but not bloodied by the blasts of several car bombs and a house explosion. Yet when he returned home, he began having pain and his body went numb. The medical diagnosis was a crushed cervical disc — an injury he got either in Iraq or in training, only to surface later.
After surgery in October 2007, he came to Fort Campbell’s warrior transition unit — but he needed more than physical therapy. He had been told he could no longer serve as a scout.
“He loves the Army, he loves the military. For them to tell him he could no longer be a scout, it was difficult. It was a strain,” recounted Lisa Gaines. He was agitated, angry and withdrawn, she said.
In response, the warrior unit gave him underwater training as therapy for his injury, coupled with family counseling, budget management and career help.
“I realized I had options, I could continue to serve,” said Sean Gaines, who soon will leave the transition unit and take on a new Army job doing transportation management.
The counseling gave him time to figure out his options, come to terms with the change, and understand that he could either “drive on or prepare to exit,” he said.
He decided to go on, saying, “I am not going to be a scout, but I will still be part of a team.”
According to Army data, the key struggle is keeping the transition units fully staffed. In many of the more remote locations, Army leaders have trouble finding enough nurse case managers. As of the end of September, 12 of the units based at military posts were short those case managers.
Other locations, such as Fort Drum, N.Y., do not have enough behavioral health specialists.
Closing some of the locations may help ease those shortages, Cheek said.
“It shouldn’t be too surprising,” he said. “We’re 18 months old here, so now it’s time for us to relook at how we’re doing this, and where we can gain some efficiencies.”
He added that an order coming out in December will further refine the screening criteria for the transition units. In particular, it will call for the Army to identify other ways to provide care for reservists so they can receive the treatment they need closer to their homes, which often are far from large military bases.
The Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, has made it clear that any soldier who needs the coordinated care must get it, regardless of how many soldiers end up in the program.
Meanwhile, officials are building permanent care centers at the main bases over the next several years, at a cost of more than $1 billion. Annual operating costs are about $270 million, with the staff of about 3,000 consuming most of that expense.
Nearly 40,000 service members have been wounded in action in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as of Friday, although more than 18,000 returned to duty within 72 hours of their injuries, according to Defense Department data.
___
On the Net:
Warrior Care: http://www.warriorcare.mil/
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Summary