Pentagon Said to Waste Hospital Stocks
The Pentagon wastes tens of millions of dollars a year by storing too many hospital supplies and holding perishable items so long that many must be thrown away, congressional investigators reported Thursday.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in a report that the Defense Department keeps six times more medical stocks on hand than does the Veterans Department, which runs a hospital network of similar size. And that does not count Pentagon supplies kept as war reserves, it said.
“Something is wrong with this system,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on oversight of government management, which has been investigating the Pentagon’s inventory practices.
Levin said his staff had calculated that waste just from throwing out old drugs was at least $18 million a year for the Pentagon’s worldwide network of 164 hospitals and medical clinics.
Donna M. Heivilin, director of logistics for the GAO, told Levin’s panel that among items stored to excess by the Pentagon are a 13-year supply of gauze sponges of a type rarely used these days.
Jonathan Blaker, director of medical logistics for the Defense Department, told the panel that he agreed with the general thrust of the GAO report.
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