June 26 (LPAC) Last April, the Independent Review Group (IRG), a panel assembled by Secretary of Defense Robert gates to look into the horrendous condition of outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, identified the decision to privatize facilities maintenance at the hospital, and the BRAC decision to close it altogether, as two of the factors in the deteriorating situation. This afternoon, members of the IRG took those issues to the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. Retired Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper told the subcommittee that in his view "we have over outsourced," and that "the direction to over outsource was done with criteria that probably didn't always work to the best interest of the people in uniform." At Walter Reed, Jumper said, privatization took certain critical functions "out of the hands of very experienced people that were used to working with a very old infrastructure at Walter Reed, and put them into the hands of lowest bidders that cut the services, cut the number of people attending the facilities...."

Former Army Secretary Togo D. West, Jr., one of the two co- chairs of the IRG, said the privatization process "proceeds from the assumption that there is a good chance that someone other than the people we have recruited for the government in civilian positions could do the job just as effectively and cheaper... That is not good for morale." The IRG has recommended that military medical facilities be exempt from privatization, but their arguments suggest that it has no place in any part of the government.

As for BRAC (the committee on Base Realignment and Closure), the IRG stopped short of recommending reversal of the decision to close Walter Reed, but said that Walter Reed should be funded and staffed to operate at full tempo until the day a new hospital to be built on the campus of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. is ready.