Better care for U.S. troops but red tape rankles

By Andrew Gray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The collection of old red-brick buildings and a big 1970s concrete structure on the edge of Washington does not usually make headlines like the White House or the Capitol, half a dozen miles away.

That changed a year ago after reports that wounded soldiers were living in rat-infested housing and facing a nightmarish bureaucracy while being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, America's flagship military hospital.

The shocking Washington Post stories prompted a flurry of sackings, investigations and promises of change. A year later, wounded soldiers and hospital staff report big improvements but the battle for disability claims still causes frustration.

"The biggest thing is the bureaucracy, the red tape," said 34-year-old Army Sgt. Maurice Burden, sitting on the bed in his room at Walter Reed. "It just seems to take so long."

Burden has been at the hospital since soon after a bomb blast in Iraq tore off half his left leg in September 2005, undergoing treatment and trying to navigate a labyrinth of paperwork to leave the Army and determine the compensation he will receive.

The scandal at Walter Reed was never really about the immediate medical care for troops, which has been widely praised. Living conditions were sometimes poor, particularly in one building, but seem to have proved relatively easy to fix.

The heart of the problem was a system overwhelmed by the number of soldiers wounded in Iraq. Thanks to modern medicine and swift evacuation from the battlefield, more soldiers are surviving their wounds than ever before.

Walter Reed has treated more than 7,400 troops wounded in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Many needed long-term outpatient care and the hospital struggled to keep track of them, get them to appointments, and guide them through the bureaucracy.

NOT SQUEAKY ENOUGH

Burden, who shows his prosthetic limb of plastic and metal while he speaks to a visiting reporter, a hospital press officer and the sergeants who follow his case, hopes to start a security company after he finally leaves Walter Reed.

When the hospital was struggling, his paperwork was lost. He disappeared from the system and no one seemed to notice.

"It's this thing of 'the squeaky wheel gets the oil'," said Burden, of Goldsboro, North Carolina, who served with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

"I wasn't squeaky enough."

Burden and others live in a residence hall previously used by hospital staff. Their rooms have flat-screen TVs and Apple computers. No one lives now in run-down Building 18, across the road from Walter Reed, which featured in the Washington Post stories.

In another room in the same hall, where electric guitar music echoes along the white and orange corridor, Specialist Joshua Nielson says one unimpressive sergeant used to be responsible for keeping track of many outpatient soldiers.