Decision makers would do well to study the health care delivery system of the Department of Veterans Affairs. To meet the challenges of the nation’s largest integrated health system, VA has developed strategic public-private partnerships that are crucial to its mission.

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Government transparency websites likely will be scaled back or even eliminated as a result of a 75 percent budget cut that congressional leaders and the White House agreed to last week.

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The Resource and Patient Management System, the electronic health-record system developed by the Indian Health Service, announced it has been certified as capable of meeting HHS' criteria through which providers can meet meaningful-use targets and receive federal financial incentives for health IT adoption.

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Two years after they joined President Barack Obama in announcing plans to create a Joint Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki have agreed to create a joint common platform for their departments’ electronic medical records.

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Former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican and the 1996 GOP presidential nominee, wrote a column in Politico this week lauding the VA.

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If one were looking to acquire and implement a comprehensive ‘open source’ electronic health record (EHR) system, serous consideration should be paid to the Resource and Patient Management System (RPMS) used by the Indian Health Service (IHS). RPMS is an adaptation of the VistA health information system originally developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), modified to meet the needs of IHS. RPMS is an integrated health information system ideally suited for implementation in healthcare facilities of varying sizes and complexity. Patients treated at IHS facilities tend to include a diverse mix of all age patients, males and females. While RPMS is deployed at many IHS inpatient facilities, it is more heavily utilized in ambulatory care settings.  Read More »

Medical costs are rising dramatically. Few consumers would dispute that. The U.S. government spent more than $2.3 trillion on healthcare in 2008, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and over eight times the $253 billion spent in 1980—all according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Who is to blame for these steeply rising costs?

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Google Health is approaching its second birthday, and according to some, also near death. I can't help but speculate that if it is indeed shuffling off the digital coil, that its demise has something to do with a general unwillingness to hand over such sensitive information to a company that already knows so much about us as individuals. (Although I should note that their privacy policy does explicitly state that your Google Health profile would not be linked to information from other Google services you use). Read More »