Allow troops redress for medical errors - Air Force Community - Air Force Times

Allow troops redress for medical errors

When an Air Force doctor makes a medical mistake that ruins an airman’s life, there should be some recourse for the airman and his family.

If he had been a civilian, Senior Airman Colton Read could have sued the surgical team that botched his gallbladder surgery and cost him his legs. Instead, he’s at the mercy of the Air Force.

Read would like to collect $100,000 from the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance traumatic injury program to help defray living expenses he would not have if he hadn’t been injured. The Air Force has denied the claim and is being backed up by the Veterans Affairs Department, which oversees the program.

Two years ago, Read was an imagery analyst who went to David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., for a routine operation so he could deploy. If he didn’t put an end to his stomach pain, he wouldn’t be going anywhere near the war zone.

So, Read took the advice of two Air Force doctors and opted to have the elective procedure. It should be been fast and easy; it wasn’t. A resident punctured Read’s aorta, which is near the gallbladder. His blood clotted, clogging the two main arteries in his legs. The loss of blood caused the tissue to die, forcing doctors to amputate both his legs — the left one above the knee and the right one at midthigh.

The future that Read wanted with the Air Force came to a screeching halt.

“The Air Force was his true passion,” Read’s wife, Jessica, said in a telephone interview from their Texas home.

The Air Force’s decision not to pay Read the $100,000 falls in line with the Feres Doctrine, which shields the military from medical malpractice lawsuits. The Feres Doctrine has been around since 1951 and it is due for an overhaul.

A review, though, won’t be coming any time soon. The best chance evaporated this spring when the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of the family of another airman who lost his life because of a mistake made by a nurse anesthetist. After Staff Sgt. Dean Witt underwent an appendectomy, the nurse anesthetist inserted a breathing tube into his esophagus instead of his trachea, depriving his brain of oxygen.

Witt didn’t die because of anything he did. And Read isn’t without his legs because of his conduct.

“He put good faith in the Air Force and in the system, and they failed him,” Jessica Read said. “As far as the Air Force is concerned, we feel let down, let down, let down.”

The Air Force maintains it is committed to providing support for the Reads now and in the future. Support is good, but it’s not redress for a wrong.

Money won’t make Read whole or bring Witt back. But airmen shouldn’t be denied fair compensation simply because they choose to serve their country.

Some way must be found to ease the burden for families wrecked by medical mistakes. It’s the only right thing to do.