Army Program Allows for More Healing at Home

OAKLAND PARK, Fla. — Staff Sgt. Mitch Riviera needs therapy on his left knee and an operation to mend his bad back, enduring and painful consequences of a yearlong deployment in Iraq. But this holiday season, because of a new Army program, the injured National Guardsman hasn't been marooned in a military hospital on some faraway base, but is back home.

"I wake up every day happy," said the 33-year-old mechanic with the 743rd Maintenance Company of the Florida National Guard. "You're just happy to be home."

Under the Community Based Health Care Initiative, wounded or ailing members of the Army National Guard and Reserve are able for the first time to live at home and recuperate while still on active-duty status.

They receive medical care at local Veterans Administration facilities or from healthcare providers authorized by Tricare, the U.S. military's equivalent of an HMO, and are given light duties at a local armory or other military facilities.

The impetus was a public embarrassment for the Army: media reports in 2003 that hundreds of wounded reservists and guardsmen were languishing in barracks as they waited to see doctors or be admitted to overcrowded medical facilities. That was Riviera's experience after his company returned from Iraq in April.

Nearly all members of his unit were allowed to go home, but the staff sergeant said he was kept on base at Ft. Stewart, Ga., for three months, housed in a 16-person trailer as he awaited his turn for medical treatment.

"They were just overwhelmed. They couldn't cope with the wounded people they had," said Riviera, who hurt his back and knee in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, while lugging the heavy tools needed in his job as a front-line mechanic and wearing 80 pounds of "battle rattle" combat gear. At one point, he said, he couldn't walk for three weeks.

"I was disorganized with all the surgery I had to go through" at Ft. Stewart, 400 miles from South Florida, Riviera said. "You're so close to home, but you can't go there, and you can't go off post."

It was his fiancee, Diana Villescaz, 24, of Bakersfield, a legal secretary, who came to his rescue, Riviera said. She heard about the Army's new community-based healthcare program, and sent an e-mail to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush asking for help.

Within 48 hours, Riviera said, he received a phone call from an officer inquiring about his case.