Phillip Longman
See the following -
VA Care: Still The Best Care Anywhere?
...[A]s the author of the title Best Care Anywhere, Why VA Health Care would be Better for Everyone, it’s been dispiriting to have it confirmed by a preliminary inspector general’s report that some frontline VA employees in Phoenix and elsewhere have been gaming a key performance metric regarding wait times. But what’s really has me enervated is how the dominant media narrative of the VA “scandal” has become so essentially misleading and damaging to the cause of health care delivery system reform...
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VA changes show the way to affordable care
Here’s an idea. We can reform Obamacare the same way the Veterans Health Administration reformed itself in the 1990s....Faced with censure and threat of dissolution, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs responded with striking changes that earned widespread praise. By 2004, a RAND corporation study implied that VA care had become America’s best.
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VA To Invest Billions in Open Source Transition
The open source strategy of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was the focus of the recent Open Source Think Tank Conference in Napa, California held April 12-14. This conference, sponsored by the Olliance Group and now on its 7th year, has become one of the premier open source gatherings in the world. Top IT leaders of the VA came to the conference to ask for the advice of the open source community in finalizing the VA's strategy for the future of its world-class electronic health record (EHR) system, VistA.
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VA Wait Times As Good or Better Than Private Sector: Report
VA health care is as good or in some cases better than that offered by the private sector on key measures including wait times, according to a study commissioned by the American Legion. The report, issued Tuesday and titled "A System Worth Saving," concludes that the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system "continues to perform as well as, and often better than, the rest of the U.S. health-care system on key quality measures," including patient safety, satisfaction and care coordination...
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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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VistA is Going Places, and Also Staying Put
The Veterans Health Administration's hospital software, VistA, is a computing legend. Few pieces of software have become the subject of a popular book (Best Care Anywhere), won repeated awards for their usability, or been credited with a 180-degree turn-around in an organization's quality. But VistA is getting long in the tooth, and many--including now the VA itself--are questioning whether it's time for something new.The speculations aren't just about VistA. They extend to all health care software of that generation, including the industry's leading electroinc health record (EHR) system--Epic--and the venerable Intermountain Healthcare.
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Where ‘Socialized Medicine’ Has a U.S. Foothold
Remarkably, Americans of all political stripes have long reserved for our veterans the purest form of socialized medicine, the vast health system operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (generally known as the V.A. health system). If socialized medicine is as bad as so many on this side of the Atlantic claim, why have both political parties ruling this land deemed socialized medicine the best health system for military veterans? Or do they just not care about them?”
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Who Should Head the VA?
...last Saturday, Cosgrove suddenly withdrew his name from consideration, stating that he still had work that needed doing at the Cleveland Clinic. What might that work be? Just hours before Cosgrove made his announcement, the intrepid trade magazine Modern Healthcare published a little noticed article that revealed a long pattern of safety problems at the Cleveland Clinic—problems that were so serious that the federal government repeatedly threatened to shut off the $1 billion a year the clinic collects from Medicare.
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