Department of Defense cannot ensure troops get mental health checkups

Report: DoD cannot ensure troops get checkups

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Sep 5, 2008 8:06:58 EDT

Law requires that service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan go through a post-deployment health re-assessment three to six months after deployment to make sure symptoms for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, as well as other health concerns that weren’t caught immediately upon return, can be treated.

But the Governmental Accountability Office released a report on Thursday stating that the Defense Department does not have a way to guarantee all war veterans actually complete that process.

The reports they use do not allow the Defense Department “to calculate a completion rate” because they don’t provide the number of service members who should have deployed and, hence, been assessed, GAO said in its report. The office also concluded that the department conducts too few site visits to have a big enough sample to validate the number of service members being assessed.

The Defense Department also had not, as of June 2008, implemented recommendations from GAO’s June 2007 report intended to fix the same problems. Defense Department officials agreed at that time that they needed to require the services to give complete reports, but did not follow through.

“As a result, DoD’s quality-assurance program cannot provide decision makers with reasonable assurance that service members complete” the assessment, the report states.

And, “as of June 2008, DoD’s quality assurance program was staffed with one full-time equivalent position,” which meant that person could not make enough site visits to check for compliance.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/military_postdeployment_care_090408w/