Press Releases

Last week, U.S. Representative Matt Cartwright introduced a bipartisan bill to fund and advance orthotic and prosthetic (O&P) research for veterans. The Wounded Warrior Research Enhancement Act (H.R. 4587) would establish the first centralized collection of outcomes-based research on O&P.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) serves approximately 40,000 individuals with limb loss due to combat-related injuries or chronic illness each year. Fortunately, advances in medical technology have greatly increased the survival rate for these wounded servicemembers, but our country is facing a shortage of O&P-trained practitioners. There are just over 7,100 practitioners specially trained in O&P nationwide. Of those, one in five is either past retirement age or eligible to retire in the next five years.

Many O&P practitioners rely on personal experience and trial-and-error methods, rather than empirical data, to determine which prosthetic device would work best for a patient. The Wounded Warrior Research Enhancement Act would award $30 million in grants to establish a centralized O&P outcomes-based research collection in order to capture the useful information gained by today’s seasoned practitioners.

“We have a moral obligation to provide our soldiers with the best quality health care available,” said Rep. Cartwright. “With a large portion of orthotic and prosthetic practitioners facing retirement, we need to harness this tremendous resource of institutional knowledge before we lose it forever. Comprehensive research would save time and money by providing practitioners with the knowledge they need to improve the likelihood that a veteran’s first prosthetic device will also be the best match.”

Earlier this year, Rep. Cartwright introduced the Wounded Warrior Workforce Enhancement Act (H.R. 3696), which would support colleges and universities seeking to establish degree programs to train specialists in O&P. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced companion legislation to H.R. 4587 and H.R. 3696 in the Senate.