At Walter Reed, A Sudden Exit
He took command of Walter Reed in August of last year, long after much of the bureaucratic red tape that bedevils wounded soldiers and their families had become standard operating procedure. When they first arrive at Walter Reed, wounded soldiers receive world class medical care, but that is only the first step on a long road to recovery. After their wounds have been stabilized and they are out of immediate danger, they become outpatients, living in apartments provided by the Army or renting their own. That's where they fall into limbo -- or at the very least into the life of a low ranking soldier coping with the intricacies and indifference of the Army bureaucracy.
At any given time, there are 55 soldiers being treated for their wounds in the hospital, and 600 outpatients undergoing therapy or waiting for further surgery. The system clearly is not capable of handling that many outpatients and that is the system Weightman inherited when he took over. There will now be an investigation into conditions at Walter Reed and other medical centers -- and that investigation could well go both up and down the Army chain of command -- up to the Army Surgeon General (who earlier in the war was the commander at Walter Reed) and down to the officer in charge of outpatient care.
Weightman was the first head to roll but probably not the last.
