IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Both departments have recently made moves to ensure that the core capabilities for the interoperable health record will be in place by then, said Rear Adm. Greg Timberlake, program director of the DOD/VA Interagency Program. He spoke yesterday at the Government Health IT conference.

The centers, to be located at the White River Junction VA Medical Center in Vermont, at the Iowa City VA Medical Center, and at the Salt Lake City VA Medical Center, will serve as satellite offices for VA's Office of Rural Health,

“The rural resource centers are envisioned not to be providers of services but rather enablers of systematic care for veterans in rural communities,” Patricia Vandenberg, assistant deputy undersecretary of veterans affairs.

Mohit Kaushal, health care director for FCC, told a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging on April 22 that through the remote systems clinicians used to treat patients at home, VA has reduced hospital admissions for 32,000 patients enrolled in its Care Coordination Home Telehealth Program.

The Financial Services Center of the Veterans Affairs Department is setting up an electronic invoicing service for commercial vendors doing business with the agency. FSC also plans to offer this service for other agencies.

The agency signed an agreement with a commercial provider of an electronic invoice submission network, OB10. A&T Systems is acting as the contractor to bridge the agency to the network.

A recent study found that the Department of Veterans Affairs generated savings of about $3 billion over 10 years by using health IT systems such as electronic health records. However, the private healthcare sector can also achieve comparable quality of care improvements and cost benefits with health IT as long as adoption is mass, systems are utilized, and standards compliance is met, said a VA official.

Each day, thousands of retired veterans don an electronic cuff at home that records their pulse and blood pressure and sends the information to care coordinators at the Veterans Health Administration. The patients also punch buttons in an electronic desktop box to indicate whether they feel shortness of breath or have swollen ankles. The care coordinators flag all problems that need immediate attention.

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson leads the new interagency Task Force on Returning Global War on Terror Heroes, which will examine the processes for combat veterans to gain services and benefits from the VA and other agencies. The task force was created in response to the revelation of unsanitary living conditions and bureaucratic hurdles to gaining health care and benefits at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

So if the technology will not come to VA, VA will come to the technology.

Roger Baker, VA's assistant secretary for information and technology and chief information officer, said he will lead an effort to move VistA into the open source community.

The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments want a contractor to evaluate how well they are sharing their patient records with each other and with other providers. The goal is to create a shared Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) for each service member.

The VA and DOD published a sources sought notice on Jan. 12 that seeks a health analyst willing to visit four to six communities to analyze how the information sharing is progressing. Responses are due by Jan. 26.

Use of interoperability standards will let the departments accomplish collaboration between their separate e-health record systems, said VA secretary Jim Nicholson. But it does not mean that the departments have to use the same record system.

Medication and medical mistakes contribute to 98,000 patients deaths each year in the United States. The Veterans Affairs Department is leading an effort to reduce that number with a wireless application designed to ensure that patients receive the correct medications.

Medication and medical mistakes contribute to 98,000 patients deaths each year in the United States. The Veterans Affairs Department is leading an effort to reduce that number with a wireless application designed to ensure that patients receive the correct medications.

VA not only has outpaced private hospitals in implementing health care IT systems, but the department is leapfrogging its private-sector counterparts in using mobile and wireless devices and applications directly in patient care.

Velazquez, the ranking member of the House Small Business Committee, said earlier this week in a letter to President Bush that, because of recent changes at SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance, she is unsure whether its workforce is ready to process the expected onslaught of loan applications from Katrina-damaged businesses.

"eGovernment is an important part of President Bush's Management Agenda to improve the operations of government," said Veneman. "My.USDA.gov is the latest installment of USDA's efforts to provide customers with the latest information they need more quickly and easily."