"If the ominous trend continues or if all our Iraq solders return home quickly, VA's crisis may deteriorate into a full-blown catastrophe," Paul Sullivan, a veterans' advocate and former VA official, told McClatchy.

September 27, 2007 - There have been many government bungles in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - including much of the response of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Now comes news that the VA could do much better in serving veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. Congress and the Bush administration should demand improvement.

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, should help lead the way. He has a generally strong record of standing up for veterans.

Improving the VA's service to veterans with PTSD is terribly important as thousands of veterans return from battle. Physical injuries are bad enough. Mental injuries from war are a huge problem as well. Veterans traumatized by combat need state-of-the-art help so that they can recover, and readjust to life with their families and the rest of the civilian world.

But internal VA documents obtained by McClatchy Newspapers show that the department could do a lot better.

While the VA's treatment for PTSD is generally effective, the documents show, nearly a third of the agency's inpatient and other intensive PTSD units failed to meet at least one of the goals monitored by a VA health-research organization, according to McClatchy Newspapers. The VA medical center in Lexington, Ky., didn't meet four of six quality goals, according to the documents.

And one of the reports indicates that the number of veterans using the VA's specialized outpatient PTSD services is growing faster than the number of medical appointments the VA is making available. The number of veterans treated grew more than 4 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to the report, while the number of appointments provided grew only 1 percent. That means the average number of visits fell for veterans. And that strongly suggests that some veterans didn't get the treatment they need in a timely manner.

"If the ominous trend continues or if all our Iraq solders return home quickly, VA's crisis may deteriorate into a full-blown catastrophe," Paul Sullivan, a veterans' advocate and former VA official, told McClatchy.

Predictably, a top VA mental-health official dismissed the significance of the internal reports.

Yet these are the VA's own reports. They should be candid looks at the department's workings, aimed at improving its performance. If not, what's the point of doing them?

Just as disturbing is the fact that these reports were not readily available to the public. The VA removed them from its Web site earlier this year. McClatchy got the most recent reports, those for fiscal year 2006, only after invoking the Freedom of Information Act.

Those records should be readily available to the public. The public, especially veterans, has every right to monitor the workings of the VA.

And Congress and the Bush administration should insist that the department improve its services for veterans with PTSD.