Fewer wounded troops prompts care unit closures

Warrior transition units: Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; Fort Irwin, Calif.; Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J.; U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.; and Fort Jackson, S.C.

Community-based warrior transition units: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Utah and Virginia.

— Department of Defense

With the number of seriously wounded and ill soldiers at a six-year low, the Army is closing some of the special units set up to care for troops and reorganizing the program.

“That’s good for the Army, good for our soldiers,” Brig. Gen. David Bishop said of the declining population of severely wounded. Bishop heads the command that runs the warrior transition units, started in 2007 after the scandal over poor conditions at what was then Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, including shoddy housing and bureaucratic delays for troops who were outpatients.

Fourteen of the 38 units, including community-based warrior transition units, will be closed. They will be replaced by community care units, according to the reorganization plan announced Thursday.

About 58,000 soldiers have passed through the special units since the start of the program, aimed at giving the most severely wounded, ill or injured soldiers comprehensive and coordinated medical and mental health care, and provide counseling on legal, financial and other issues as they transition either out of the service to civilian life or back to military duty.

But the number of people who need such care has steadily fallen because of the end of U.S. presence in Iraq, the decrease in troops in Afghanistan and the fact that Afghans are taking the lead on security missions there, Pentagon officials say. The population of the warrior transition units stands at 7,070 this month, compared to 10,053 in October of 2012 and more than 12,000 in 2008.

Today’s population of soldiers in the special units is the smallest since September 2007, when there were about 6,200 in those units, according to Army data.

Some of the current warrior transition units have fewer than 10 soldiers in them, and Bishop said reorganization — even with the planned startup of community care units — will reduce staff by about 500 people while standardizing and improving care for troops.

Bishop said the changes result from periodic reviews of the program and are “absolutely not related to budget cuts, sequestration or furloughs” of federal employees that resulted from the debt crisis.

Three specific things will happen under the reorganization plan. First, the warrior transition units, which are at major bases where there are military medical facilities, will be reduced to 24 from 29. Second, all nine so called community-based warrior transition units — which were largely used by National Guard and Army Reserve troops designated as able to heal in their home communities as opposed to on a military installation — will close. Third, officials will establish 13 community care units that will allow troops to still get help in their community but will be answerable to the larger units on the military bases, so they can be better controlled and give troops better access to resources, Bishop said.

The reorganization is supposed to be finished by October.

Before the special warrior transition units were established, soldiers with health problems were placed on “medical hold” status, and they received less attention during recovery. The new units provided more structure, emphasized that as soldiers their new mission was to heal. The units also gave each patient a doctor, squad leader and nurse case manager who oversaw treatment, and coordinated with social workers, therapists and other specialists the soldier needed.

The program has had its ups and downs. A year after it started, the number of troops in the units spiked to more than 12,000 because commanders were using them as dumping grounds for soldiers with lesser injuries — a way to get them off their books and get replacements for their units. Eligibility requirements since then have been tightened.