New America Foundation
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A 40-Year 'Conspiracy' at the VA
Four decades ago, in 1977, a conspiracy began bubbling up from the basements of the vast network of hospitals belonging to the Veterans Administration. Across the country, software geeks and doctors were puzzling out how they could make medical care better with these new devices called personal computers. Working sometimes at night or in their spare time, they started to cobble together a system that helped doctors organize their prescriptions, their CAT scans and patient notes, and to share their experiences electronically to help improve care for veterans...
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Avoidable Care Conference Foments Revolution
The Avoiding Avoidable Care Conference wasn’t so much about the epidemic of unnecessary medical care or the costs of unnecessary care. It was a rallying cry to the medical community, and to doctors in particular, to reclaim the profession of medicine from the country’s market-dominated healthcare system.
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Costly Testing and Lifestyle are Increasing Health Care Costs
Chronic disease and costly testing are two big contributors to health care costs in the United States, with many diseases being preventable and many medical tests being unnecessarily performed. Addressing both issues could produce much-needed savings, say health care professionals.
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Phillip Longman's Senate Testimony Before the The State of VA Health Care Hearings
We need to open up the VA and grow it, extending no-questions-asked eligibility not only to all vets but to their family members as well. This not only makes clinical sense, it also makes economic sense. So long as the VA remains one of, if not the most, cost- effective, scientifically driven, integrated health care delivery systems in the country, the more patients it treats, the better for everyone.
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Study: Modern Economies 'Rise and Fall' with Nuclear Families
If the wealth of a nation is tied to both the quality and the quantity of its people, then modern trends toward cohabiting instead of marrying, easy divorce and fewer children born to couples will have sweeping economic consequences, a new report says. The “long-term fortunes of the modern economy rise and fall with the family,” the Social Trends Institute says in its new report, “The Sust Read More »
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The Right Way to Modernize VA's VistA EHR: Shift Development to the Private Sector and the Cloud
While changes to VistA are warranted and necessary, trashing the entire system because one component may be flawed makes little sense from technological or financial perspectives. The VA scheduling scandal was the product of an agency overwhelmed by veterans returning from two theaters of war. In that scenario, the scheduling system became a scapegoat for organizational and human resources challenges that were bound to manifest in one way or another.The VA should not heed calls to replace VistA for these key reasons...
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Veterans aren’t the only ones waiting for health care
But the big question with these stories about the VA is, "compared to what?" This scandal wouldn't exist if the VA didn't have performance metrics on its employees. If it didn't measure or care whether veterans get prompt appointments it could just do what the rest of the health-care system has done and not hold people responsible for these metrics. Read More »
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