Sen. Dick Durbin announced that he would be introducing two bills aimed at providing the best medical care to wounded warriors.
The Wounded Warrior Work Force Enhancement Act and the Wounded Warrior Research Enhancement Act will help integrate the latest science in classrooms and provide the best teaching techniques, as well help expand orthotic and prosthetic master’s degree programs in universities that already have them and help other universities upgrade their programs to a master’s program. Students in these programs would be required to participate in VA-affiliated facilities, including the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
The bills also direct the Department of Defense and the VA to study outcomes research, which is essential to create the best practices out of all the anecdotal evidence that is being gathered.
“Many medical fields do this, but not for orthotics and prosthetics,” Durbin said. “Small investments like this will go a long way to ensure this field will have the kind of outcomes for years to come that we will be proud of. In an era of tight budgets and Washington looking at ways to spend dollars wisely, improving the lives of our wounded warriors is a smart investment.”
