WASHINGTON (AP) — Only about half of the veterans diagnosed with PTSD last year after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan received the recommended therapy despite efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs to beef up its mental health staffing, the Institute of Medicine said in a report released Friday. Combined, the two departments spend $3.3 billion annually on medications and therapies meant to curb or cure Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. "We are at the cusp of a wave of PTSD," says Sandro Galea, a physician, epidemiologist and professor at Columbia University who chaired the committee of 16 experts for the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences. "They could be highly effective, but we won't know unless outcomes are tracked and evaluated.” 
 
 The IOM, an independent, nonprofit organization, also urged the two agencies to begin collaborating on the health progress of all current and former military members diagnosed with PTSD –- “regardless of where they receive treatment.” 
 
 In response, the VA’s Acting Under Secretary for Health, Dr. Robert Jesse, said he and his colleagues “appreciate and respect” the IOM’s exhaustive review, adding the agency "will address these recommendations to better serve and meet the expectations of our veterans." Defense officials similarly lauded the "thorough assessment," which recognized the resources DoD has devoted to collect symptom severity and PTSD outcome data "at all points of service" by using a series of clinical outcome measures, said Lt. Col. Cathy Wilkinson, a DoD spokesperson for Personnel and Readiness. She added that Defense already "is collaborating" with VA to "identify a common set of outcome measures and quality metrics for monitoring, assessing, and improving the mental health care provided to service members and veterans." And while both are making strides to identify and treat people with PTSD, many obstacles remain before they will have an "integrated and higher-performing" system, the report said. We are already taking practical steps to address many of these issues," said Lt. Col. Cathy Wilkinson, a Defense Department spokeswoman. Play Facebook 
 
 Twitter 
 
 Google Plus 
 
 Embed ‘It’s Their Fight’: Iraq Veterans Voice Strong Opinions 2:06 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog 
 
 During 2012, DoD spent $294 million -– while the VA invested more than $3 billion –- on programs and services “that range in their intensity” to prevent, screen, diagnose, and treat current and ex-service members who have PTSD, or who are at risk for it, the IOM said. PTSD is the third most common service-connected disability following hearing loss and tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. During 2012, 13.5 percent of U.S. soldiers had a PTSD diagnosis as well as 10 percent of Marines, 4.5 percent of Navy personnel, and 4.4 percent of Air Force members, the IOM noted. The IOM also found: 
 
 The Defense Department’s PTSD programs "appear to be local, ad hoc, incremental, and crisis-driven, with little planning devoted to the development of a long-range approach.” 
 
 Leaders within DoD and the service branches “at all levels” are not consistently held accountable for failing to implement programs meant to effectively manage PTSD in troops. A new template was supposed to be available for clinicians beginning last November but was not operational as of late January, the report said. And many of those veterans were not seeking treatment at the VA.
– The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs are ill-prepared to handle a looming PTSD epidemic—or even the cases they already have, according to a 300-page study released today. Experts from the Institute of Medicine, under direction from Congress, found that just 53% of veterans whose primary diagnosis was PTSD got the recommended eight sessions of psychotherapy over a 14-week stretch last year, well short of the VA's 67% target, the AP reports. The Pentagon isn't doing much better; its programs for treating active-duty PTSD sufferers are "ad hoc, incremental, and crisis-driven, with little planning devoted to the development of a long-range approach," the report concluded. What's more, neither department is effectively measuring whether their PTSD programs—which cost $3.3 billion in 2012—are actually working. "We found it surprising that no PTSD outcome measures are used consistently," one epidemiologist tells NBC News. All of which is troubling, because experts expect the steady stream of diagnoses to continue. "We are at the cusp of a wave of PTSD," the committee's chair tells USA Today.