By Fred W. Baker III
American Forces Press Service
For those not reporting directly to the units, Marine patient affairs teams reach out to all major medical facilities. And, Marines are based in each of the Veterans Administration polytrauma centers in California, Florida, Minnesota and Virginia.
Also, the Marines have based 30 "super case managers" across the country in support cells to manage some of its most difficult cases. The case managers are based in communities where there is a large demographic of Marines recovering from their wounds. They work out of their homes, or out of borrowed office space. But their primary job is to be out meeting with Marines face-to-face to establish personal relationships, Boyle said.
To further extend its reach into the communities where former and current Marines are recovering close to home, the Corps enlisted active-duty representatives stationed at its 186 reserve sites across the country. These Marines are responsible for the training and readiness of the reserve units to which they are assigned, but they also are tasked with checking on recovering Marines at in hospitals and at home, including being on-call for help. Such calls sometimes come from family and friends when a Marine begins having difficulties coping with stress or a brain injury whose symptoms crop up months after their release from service.
Topping it off, the Marines have more than 100 "hometown links," or reservists, who spend their part-time duty helping former Marines find jobs, talking to civic groups, working with the media and other community relations work. They also can make house-calls, Boyle said.
Carrie Reedy, a nurse case manager at the Wounded Warrior Battalion East at Camp Lejeune, N.C., works on case files of Marines assigned to her. Three nurse case managers on the battalion staff help make sure Marines keep their appointments. This is sometimes difficult because medications and brain injuries muddle appointment dates and times for the Marines. More than three-quarters of the Marines there suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or a traumatic brain injury, officials said.
DoD photo by Fred W. Baker III Hi-Res
"Within in a couple of hours, we can have a Marine standing on a Marine's doorstep, helping with his problem," Boyle said. "This really does allow us the ability to reach out and touch. It is nice to be able to not just sit here and talk to a Marine on the phone. Sometimes he may respond or may not respond, but if somebody shows up at his door, sits down in his living room -- that makes a huge difference."
The cross-country network is tied together by a massive computer tracking system launched this year. The Web-based system allows leaders to track a Marine as he moves through his recovery process. This is backed by a full-time operations center, also based at Quantico. Designed much like a combat operations center, it monitors every case within the regiment.
Most unique to the Marine Corps' program is its 24-hour per day, seven-day-per-week call center on Quantico. The other services have call centers, but the Marine's center on Quantico made a commitment last summer to begin calling some 8,000 former Marines who were injured since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but have since left the service.
In the past, "We'd meet them at the door, we'd shake their hand and hand them a (record of their service) and say 'Have a good life,'" Boyle said. "We don't do that any more. It's Marine for life. We take care of them when they leave the service. For as long as they are out there, we are going to be here to help them and address their needs."
Of the center's 20 employees, 18 are retired Marines. The other two are Marine spouses. They started calling the most seriously injured first and, so far, have reached more than 5,000 of the Marines.
Many of the contact numbers on file are old and no longer valid so it takes some research and effort for the team. The team likes to talk to family members as they track down the Marine.
"We like to talk to moms and dads and wives, because Marines don't always tell us what's really going on. But moms and dads and wives do. We've fixed a lot of problems out there," Boyle said.
Call centers will be added to each of the wounded warrior battalions, and plans are to staff them with medical personnel for assessments and referrals.
The center also receives calls from Vietnam veterans and helps when they can, Boyle said.
Looking Forward
Taking care of wounded Marines now is no longer "business as usual," said Boyle.
As senior leaders work through the bureaucracy of changing a decades-old system, Boyle and his staff are on the front line of policy change for wounded warrior care. There has been some "push back" Boyle said, but, for the most part, his opinion is "everything is waiverable."
"It's not law. It's policy. They will waive policy, they will rewrite policy," Boyle said.
And, to date, many changes have been made to the policies that were most obviously in contradiction to the service's commitment to caring for Marines, he said.
But lasting, permanent change is needed within many systems to mold a single system that has the care of the Marine at its core, Boyle said.
"We've got to make sure that the wounded warriors are the priority. This is our one chance to fix it and fix it right," Boyle said. "If we do that now, we'll be much better off in the next conflict down the road."
As it is, Boyle said, the service is proving itself "100 times better" than it was a year ago at taking care of its Marines.
