Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

See the following -

"Another Walter Reed-Type Scandal"

Niko Karvounis | Mother Jones | September 14, 2008

Soldiers at the military hospital languished in part due to incompatible databases and dismal record keeping. Welcome to the Pentagon's $20 billion medical-records boondoggle. Read More »

Audit: DOD E-Health Timeline 'Not Realistic'

Billy Mitchell | Fed Scoop | June 1, 2016

The Pentagon inspector general doesn't think the DOD can reach initial operational capability of its new $9 billion, "state-of-the-art" electronic health records system by December. The Defense Department's goal of having a pilot of its modernized electronic health record platform running by the year's end "may not be realistic," its inspector general said Wednesday...

Read More »

China Has Repeatedly Hacked Veterans Affairs Databases Since 2010, Lawmaker Says

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | June 4, 2013

Since 2010, foreign actors have repeatedly compromised an unencrypted database maintained by the Veterans Affairs Department that contains personally identifiable information on roughly 20 million veterans, a House lawmaker said Tuesday. Read More »

DoD Electronic Health Records Help VA Disability Claims

Press Release | Department of Defense (DoD) | February 6, 2014

The Defense Department has made troops’ health records electronically available to the Veterans Affairs Department to speed up the adjudication of disability claims, a DoD health information technology official said. Read More »

Having Already Failed Once, DoD Snubs Open Source For Second EMR Try

Anne Zieger | EMR and EHR | August 28, 2012

In theory, the VA now has everything it needs to standardize and upgrade the open source VistA EMR, especially after forming the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) organization.  But when it comes to bringing that expertise to the DoD’s EMR projects, it seems OSEHRA alone can’t do the trick. Read More »

How Data And Communities Are Changing Health Care

Mike O'Neill | Open Source Delivers | August 21, 2012

The open source model is tremendously powerful, and it’s something VA understood when it created VistA. The next chapter will see the user-driven super community, OSEHRA, powered by data and the OSS ethos, helping to transform how VA delivers care.

Read More »

VA Claims Backlog Saddles Disabled Veterans

Mitch Shaw | Standard-Examiner | February 5, 2014

Department of Veterans Affairs officials say they want to end their massive benefits backlog for disabled veterans by next year, but a new study says progress on the initiative has stalled. Read More »

VA Stops Releasing Data On Injured Vets As Total Reaches Grim Milestone [EXCLUSIVE]

Jamie Reno | International Business Times | November 1, 2013

The United States has likely reached a grim but historic milestone in the war on terror: 1 million veterans injured from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But you haven't heard this reported anywhere else. Why? Because the government is no longer sharing this information with the public. Read More »

What Is OSEHRA And VistA?

Matthew McCall | Project Blue Button | October 1, 2012

According to the oral history of the Department of Veterans Affairs, of which I have been an attentive listener over the years, once upon a time, innovation ruled the land. VistA, the legendary Electronic Health Record, was born in the basements of VA medical centers, and raised like a child by doting clinicians and wise developers... Read More »

"What Systems Work In Healthcare And Why?" Is Focus Of 19th Annual Health Policy Conference

Press Release | ECRI Institute | November 2, 2012

Today’s healthcare systems face escalating challenges as they aggregate into larger and more complex health systems that are vertically and horizontally integrated. The trend is being driven by both business conditions and new government policies. But are the new systems producing better clinical and business outcomes? Read More »

'Blue Button' Technology May Give You More Control Of Your Health Information

Bill Toland | Siox City Journal | June 28, 2013

Get a group of tech-savvy physicians and electronic medical records experts in a room, ask them about the way forward, and the subject of the Blue Button is sure to come up. Read More »

10 Questions For Obama’s Chief Technology Officer

John Harwood | New York Times | July 8, 2013

[Todd Park's] role has taken on heightened importance after several recent developments, including the implementation of the new health care law, efforts to reduce the backlog in Department of Veterans Affairs claims processing, and privacy issues raised by disclosures about data collection by the National Security Agency. Read More »

11 Things About Health Care I'm Dying to Redesign

The folks at Ideo recently published 19 Things We're Dying to Redesign, covering a wide range of products, services, and systems, both big and small.  It's very thought-provoking, but only one of them addressed a health care topic (oddly enough, incontinence). If there is an area of our lives that badly needs redesign, it would be health care. And not redesigning it sometimes literally results in us dying. Let's start with a clean slate. I'm not as ambitious as Ideo, in terms of the breadth or number of topics, but here are 11 things about heath care that I'm dying to redesign...

2 Winners Named For ONC's Blue Button App Challenges

Mary Mosquera | mHIMSS | October 11, 2012

A California-based developer of mobile technology tools and a Virginia-based provider of communications solutions for care providers have been named the winners of two Blue Button app competitions sponsored by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. Read More »

2011 Gov 2.0 Year in Review

Alex Howard | O'Reilly Radar | December 30, 2011

...If you look back at a January interview with Clay Johnson on key trends for Gov 2.0 and open government in 2011, some of his predictions bore out. The House of Representatives did indeed compete with the White House on open government, though not in story lines that played out in the national media or Sunday morning talk shows. Read More »