Army starts to correct records of Madigan PTSD Veterans

Army begins correcting medical records for some former Madigan patients
Review board’s decision allows misdiagnosed to begin receiving benefits
The Olympian
BY ADAM ASHTON
Staff writer
November 29, 2013

The Army has begun correcting medical records for former Madigan Army Medical Center patients who left the military with conflicting diagnoses for behavioral health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jeanie Chang, 30, of Tenino learned last week that the Army Review Board for Correction of Medical Records will change her file to reflect the PTSD diagnosis she received at Madigan last year.

Previously, the review board rejected her PTSD diagnosis and refused to correct her records, a decision that cost her disability benefits and left her with a sense that military doctors were misusing her conversations with them.

Chang was among some 400 former Madigan patients who were called back to the hospital last year amid concerns the hospital’s forensic psychiatry team was under-diagnosing PTSD to save the Army money in long-term disability benefits. Of those, 158 patients left the review with PTSD diagnoses.

About 20 of them have had trouble persuading the review board to honor their newer diagnoses. Instead, the board favored the forensic psychiatry reports that were at the center of the hospital’s PTSD controversy.
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