Veterans Health Administration
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Don't Dismantle the VA
After the Department of Veterans Affairs’ waitlist scandal gained national attention two years ago, most Americans’ first instinct was to look for ways to make things better. But some political insiders and corporate funders saw only an opportunity to make billions off the wounds of our veterans. What followed was an unprecedented smear campaign to discredit the and promote private insurance as a viable alternative to the highly specialized, integrated, and cost-effective Veterans Health Administration...
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Inside the Drive to Collect DNA from 1M Veterans and Revolutionize Medicine
The Department of Veterans Affairs is gathering blood from 1 million veterans and sequencing their DNA. At the same time, computer scientists are creating a database that combines those genetic sequences with electronic medical records and other information about veterans’ health. The ultimate goal of the project, known as the Million Veteran Program, is to uncover clues about disorders ranging from diabetes to post-traumatic stress disorder...
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Jonathan Perlin’s ‘Elevator Pitch to the President’ on Health IT
What would you say if you had to make an “elevator pitch” in just three to five minutes to the President of the United States about what to focus on in terms of the nation’s healthcare system? That was the question put to panelists at a Sept. 26 meeting of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). Jonathan Perlin, M.D., chief medical officer of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), responded: “It’s all about the data”...
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Lawmakers Dispute DoD, VA’s Claims of Health Record Interoperability
Three months ago, the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs certified to Congress that their electronic health records could finally exchange data in a meaningful way. But lawmakers aren’t satisfied with that assertion and are looking for more clarity on what “interoperability” actually means. With some fanfare, the two departments both attested that they’d met a 2014 congressional mandate to make all of their respective health data interoperable with one another’s IT systems...
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Let Patients Read Their Medical Records
Sometimes, before I interview new patients, while I’m waiting for them to be transported from the emergency department to the medical floor, I play a game.
I look through their lab tests. I peruse their imaging studies. I read other doctors’ notes and recent discharge summaries. Then I guess what the diagnosis is. I know this is bad. It goes against most of what I learned about good doctoring in medical school — that the patient’s story is the core of medicine, that it’s essential for accurate diagnoses and therapeutic relationships...
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VA and VistA: Can They Be Fixed?
The Department of Veterans Affairs is rushing to make changes to its IT infrastructure and systems before the next administration enters the White House. And skeptical lawmakers, oversight bodies and outside experts are cautiously optimistic about the eventual outcomes. The key words, though, are "cautiously" and "eventual"...
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VA Edges Closer to Rollout of New Health Record Platform
The Department of Veterans Affairs is edging closer to full deployment of a web-based modular electronic health record platform that promises to build on improvements in interoperability within VA and between VA and the Defense Department. Officials hope to have the Enterprise Health Management Platform up and running by the end of this summer. EHMP is a dynamic, web-based way to organize, display, search, filter and share patient data from VA's open-source VistA health record. EHMP provides a virtual space to develop and deploy specialized health and wellness applications for use by VA providers...
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