In light of the recent scandals, what are your thoughts on military health care?

Although I'm not a lawyer and I've never played one on TV, I think that "relief of command" would probably the first step to any future punishment, pending a thorough investigation. My thoughts and prayers go out to those who died and their families.

It sounds as though proper infection control procedures were not used at WAMC. It could be a widespread problem, Army wide, but it could also be a localized problem as well.

Here at Ft. Bragg, I have quite a few issues with our health care. If I go into the clinic with, oh, let's say a pain in my neck, here is the probable scenario: First, I see my assigned provider, usually a PA, who will send me for an x-ray, look at the x-ray to confirm she doesn't know what she is looking at, and refer me to a specialty clinic. I will call the referral line and leave a message because nobody ever answers. They will not call me back. I will probably call two or three more times over the course of a week without a call back until I get frustrated and file an ICE complaint on them (true story, I actually had to do it before), whereupon they will finally call me and give me an appointment to the proper clinic in a surly tone of voice. I will wait 3-6 weeks for my appointment and when I show up, I will be told that they want to do an MRI before they attempt to diagnose me. I will wait for 3-4 weeks for an open MRI appointment, which is usually at 3am or 9pm on a Saturday night. I will then have to wait 72 hours to call the specialty clinic back to make another appointment, which I will have to schedule for 3-6 weeks from then. I will finally make it back to my specialty clinic where the doctor will look at the MRI and say, "what was the problem again?" He or she will then refer me to physical therapy for 6 months and "if it still bothers you in 6 months, come back to see me." I will go to physical therapy for 6 months, return to the specialty clinic, and find that my doctor has PCSed, and I have to start from square one with the new specialist. By then, whatever was wrong with my neck will have either healed itself, or I will have become used to the pain and it won't hurt anymore (this actually happened to me when I walked around for two years with three torn tendons in my left ankle).

My wife refused to go to the doctor because it meant she would miss work a minimum of three times for even the smallest issue. The doctors throw medication at you without really taking the time to figure out what is causing the problem. It is impossible to get a same day appointment on most days, so if you don't plan ahead before you come down with the flu, you end up having to work all day without quarters or meds, which makes whatever illness you have last longer. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I don't care that Womack is the busiest medical facility in the Army. If you know that, then hire more staff. Oh, and build a parking garage for Pete's sake!

I have many opinions on the military health care system. As a former NCOIC of a physical therapy clinic I understand some of the struggles. We had times where it would be 3-4 weeks for a Soldier to be seen by a provider. We even had providers that would come in early, see patients during lunch and stay late to help decrease the wait. Because the officers over the department and the hospital didn't like Soldiers waiting to have appointments booked. We would request to hire another Physical therapist and be denied because of budget cuts. So the staff that worked there was being over worked on a daily basis. You can only be overworked for so long until patient care starts to decrease. This is a fact in any profession that after so long you get tired and start cutting corners. Hospitals need to be able to hire the staff needed to support the patient population they provide care for. Until this happens we will continue to see the same problems over and over.

As a patient in the military health care system I have seen both good care and bad care. It's sad that some providers don't care. Unfortunately unless something as serious as death happens it's difficult to terminate their employment.