When was the warrior transition unit established

The Warrior Transition Unit is a transition assistance unit with the mission of overseeing the health, welfare and morale of warriors receiving medical care at an Army military treatment facility. By design, the unit has a robust cadre, which allows doctors and nurses to focus on medical care, nurse case managers to manage medical care, and unit cadre to focus on meeting all command and control functions.

As the population of mobilized Soldiers in need of medical evaluation and treatment rose, the Army established accelerated access standards, dedicated providers and case managers, new command and control and installation support structure, and other provisions to support these active-duty Soldiers.

MHO Soldiers were defined as mobilized Soldiers who were diverted from their normal mobilization mission or any contingency operation because of new or aggravated pre-existing medical conditions as a result of being mobilized.

Soldiers could become medical holdovers either in a pre-deployment or post-deployment status, including via medical evacuation. With the establishment of the Army Medical Action Plan in , the term medical holdover gave way to warrior transition.

To reach the WTU, call Share: Facebook Twitter Linkedin. Assessing the Triad in light of the changes in WTU soldiers' diagnoses would position the Army to better determine how to meet WTU soldiers' medical needs.

The Army faces challenges in its oversight of the selection of squad leaders and platoon sergeants to staff WTUs, in the evaluation of staff training, and in the ability to adjust future staff levels if needed.

Specifically, the Army has established selection processes and updated its selection criteria for these WTU personnel, but it is not exercising oversight responsibility to track full adherence to these policies, specifically the Army's requirement to interview candidates for these positions.

Candidates for these positions are drawn from a mix of Army occupations, and the selection process, including interviews, is intended to ensure the suitability of the staff selected for these sensitive positions. While the Army has taken steps to improve its training program for squad leaders and platoon sergeants, the program does not incorporate a post-training assessment of the application of training to the work environment.

Without information that could be obtained from such assessments, the Army may miss an opportunity to incorporate information concerning the practical application of training. In addition, the Army has not developed plans for how it would increase WTU staff levels, if needed, to support any potential future increase in demand.

The ability to reverse the decision to inactivate 11 WTUs by August was a key planning consideration for the Army. Before I took company command, I went through our installation's mandatory pre-command course, a one-week course showing us the various support agencies on the base.

Although designed to rectify the abhorrent conditions of Walter Reed Hospital, they quickly succumbed to egregious mission creep. By the time I took command, not even a year after the Walter Reed scandal hit the press, representatives from the WTU were already referring to these organizations as ways to get non-deployable soldiers "off the books".

For example, if you have a private who's non-deployable for medical reasons, you can simply fill out the paperwork, send them to the WTU, and you'll get a replacement in a few months. When faced with an impending combat deployment, commanders feel they have no other choice but to send medically non-deployable soldiers to the WTU. Have I ever sent someone to the WTU? I sent my first sergeant to the WTU, and it resulted in the most difficult time in my entire company command.

He had faced a string of unfortunate medical conditions, culminating with the discovery of a malignant tumor on his kidney, just a few millimeters from a major artery. Obviously, he needed serious medical care, and he couldn't have performed his duties in the unit any longer. I had to send him to the WTU. Yet, he felt as if going to the WTU-an organization created specifically for soldiers like him-was a slap in the face.

Because of these soldiers, valuable resources are taken away from those who need it the most. Before deployment, our unit compiled a list of all soldiers who were considered medically non-deployable, and we found an ungodly number of troops coming out of basic training with back, knee, and ankle problems. Some of them qualified for a special profile which prohibited them from wearing body armor, thus making themselves non-deployable.