Personal Injury Law

Improvements to Medical Care for Veterans

By Bruce Stern

Last Thursday, the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General released a report calling for the need to improve the medical care provided to veterans who sustained traumatic brain injury.

According to the report, Inspector General’s office studied the cases of 52 Iraqi and Afghan war veterans to determine whether or not the care they had received had improved since the Inspector General’s report of two years ago in July 2006. Although the report indicated that overall care had improved, nevertheless there were still patients and families who had not received the appropriate medical treatment and follow-up.

This report followed a study released last month by the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research group. What was most interesting in that report was that Rand Corp. found that patients with mild traumatic brain injury required $27,260 to $32,760 a year to treat a patient with a mild traumatic brain injury. Severe traumatic brain injury cases required an annual cost of $268,900 to $408,250 per year.

Clearly, the Rand study documents that there is certainly nothing ‘mild’ about mild traumatic brain injury.

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on May 07, 2008 (boomark / email).