Wounded Warrior Care
Severely injured Service members often require prolonged treatment, time to heal, and rehabilitative care before a decision can be made on their medical ability to remain on active duty. The Military Health System (MHS) is meeting this challenge by improving our coordination of health care for Service members and veterans with Veterans Affairs (VA). MHS is dedicated to ensuring that Service members are provided outstanding clinical care and streamlined administrative processes to return them to duty status or to transition them from MHS care to the VA health care system in an effective and timely manner.
To ensure a seamless transition of health services from one agency to another, MHS and the VA are implementing these critical elements:
- a full understanding of medical care capabilities within both agencies by all medical providers involved,
- clear communications of the transition plan between providers in each agency and with the patient and patient's family,
- timely transfer of all pertinent medical records before or at the time of transfer of the patient, and
- ongoing communication after the transfer of the patient between the medical providers in each agency and with the patient and patient's family.
The MHS continues to improve the transition of health care between the agencies by working in partnership with the VA to establish specialty centers of excellence. Centers dedicated to wounded warrior care include:
- Walter Reed Army Medical Center Amputee Care Center and Gait Laboratory
- National Naval Medical Center’s Traumatic Stress and Brain Injury Program
- Center for the Intrepid state-of-the-art rehabilitation facility and Brooke Army Medical Center Burn Center at Ft. Sam Houston
- Naval Medical Center San Diego Comprehensive Combat Casualty Care Center
- The multi-site DoD/VA Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center for patient care, education, and clinical research
We have made tremendous progress in rehabilitative care of our injured combatants. The medical personnel of our combined services are doing outstanding work to develop and implement the MHS rehabilitative programs necessary to return our severely injured Service members to duty or to a productive civilian life.