Army thins warrior transition entrance rules

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Army thins warrior transition entrance rules
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Aug 9, 2008 8:05:01 EDT

When Army generals recently appeared before Congress to testify about staffing problems at the service’s Warrior Transition Units, they laid out several new changes to fix those problems.

But they left out a key part of the plan: It lowers staffing needs at the WTUs by freezing out thousands of wounded soldiers.

“The Army issued a Fragmentary Order on July 1, 2008, refining the entry criteria for WTUs,” Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, Army surgeon general, wrote on a medical command Web site. “Two base requirements: six months’ expected rehabilitative care and the need for complex medical management.”

But the scandal that erupted last year over mismanagement at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., showed that leaving soldiers in their own units as they go through the medical retirement process can cause problems in two ways:

• The process is delayed by line-unit personnel who don’t know how to handle medical retirement paperwork.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/army_disabled_080908w/