Robert A. McDonald

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2 Million Telehealth Visits For Vets In 2014

Katie Wike | Health IT Outcomes | October 20, 2014

The number of veterans using telehealth services has greatly increased in the last four years according to VA...

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AANP, AMVETS Team Up to Promote Non-Pharmacological Approaches to Treating Veterans with Chronic Pain

Press Release | AMVETS, American Association of Naturopathic Physicians | September 18, 2015

AMVETS, one of the nation’s largest veterans service organizations, has joined with the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) in seeking to promote natural, non-pharmacological approaches to treating veterans suffering from chronic pain. The organizations have collaborated via a "Dear Colleague" letter in the US House of Representatives calling on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to take steps to employ licensed naturopathic physicians, who are specially trained in natural, non-invasive methods of healing.

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Clueless or Craven? The White House Gets the VA Story Exactly Backwards

Sad to say, the Obama administration seems clueless about what might be broken at the VA and how to fix it. Either that, or it is just cravenly saying and doing whatever it thinks is necessary to make the story go away. Evidence for the clueless hypothesis came on Friday, when White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors weighed in with his diagnosis (pdf) of what ails the VA. The document is extraordinary in its contradictions, sloppy formulations, and non-evidence-based conclusions.

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College Students Tackle PTSD at First DC Hackathon

More than 50 college students from across the world gathered this previous weekend at HackDC 2015, the first Hackathon dedicated to crowdsourcing innovative ways to address the serious problem of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by creating mobile applications and solutions. The event, which started on Friday, went through Sunday afternoon. Held at the Richard J. Ernst Community Cultural Center in the Annandale Campus of the Northern Virginia Community Colleges (NVCC), HackDC 2015 provided the participants with access to food, sleeping facilities, and showers so that they could work straight through the weekend. 

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Naturopathic Physicians and the Veterans Administration

AMVETS, one of the country's largest veterans service organizations, has teamed up with the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) to promote natural, non-pharmacological approaches to treating veterans suffering from chronic pain. In a Dear Colleague letter in the U.S. House of Representatives, lawmakers have called on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to take steps to employ licensed naturopathic physicians, who are trained in natural, non-invasive methods of healing. Congressman Mark Pocan (D-WI), concerned about the dangers of overmedicating veterans, especially with prescribed opioid drugs, has penned a letter that many colleagues have signed including Representatives Julia Brownley (D-CA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and Walter Jones (R-NC) as the letter's initial signators.

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New V.A. Secretary Says Hiring Spree Is Needed To Meet Patient Demand

Richard A. Oppel | The New York Times | September 8, 2014

The new secretary of Veterans Affairs said Monday that the department needed to hire “tens of thousands of new doctors, new nurses, new clinicians” — emphasizing the significance of a shortage of employees who are directly involved in treating patients, a factor many experts said was a main driver in the waiting-list scandal that rocked the agency this year...

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OSEHRA 2015: CORAnet Solutions CEO to Address Open Source Summit on the Need for Personal Health Information Exchanges

Press Release | CORAnet | July 27, 2015

Cora Alisuag, the CEO of CORAnet Solutions, Inc. will speak on the importance of Mobile Personal Health Information Exchange (PHIE) technologies in providing patients and their caregivers with the critical information needed for their personal care and wellness during the 2015 OSEHRA Open Source Summit taking place in Bethesda, MD July 29 to 31st. Alisuag has been one of the key visionaries who proposed the idea of patients and their family members being able to obtain their personal health records. This concept was embraced by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) under the name of the Blue Button initiative.

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OSEHRA 2015: VA Secretary Articulates Open Source Strategy as the Core of VA’s Transformation During Summit

Robert A. McDonald, Secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), articulated a clear strategy for the VA’s technology efforts based on open source, crowdsourcing and agile development during a speech at the 2015 OSEHRA Open Source Summit in Bethesda, MD yesterday. McDonald, who was the keynote speaker of the conference, gave an overview of the crisis that the VA was facing a year ago and the steps taken to address the crisis. McDonald said that his primary step was to change the focus of the discussion from problems within the VA bureaucracy to a focus of placing the customers, America's veterans and military personnel, at the center of things.

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OSEHRA 2015: VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald to Keynote Open Source EHR Summit

Press Release | OSEHRA | June 8, 2015

The Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) is pleased to announce that the Honorable Robert A. McDonald, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, will serve as the keynote speaker for its fourth annual summit, entitled Community-Powered Healthcare IT Solutions. Secretary McDonald will speak on the morning of July 30 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center. “We are honored to have Secretary McDonald address our community,” said LTG (ret.) James B. Peake, M.D., Chairman of the OSEHRA Board of Directors and former U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs. “OSEHRA was established by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in 2011 to foster innovation and serve as a hub of open source EHR activity. As we approach our fourth anniversary, the VA and the entire open source community are seeing the fruits of that initiative. We are pleased to welcome the Secretary, and are grateful for VA’s continued support of open source.”

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OSEHRA 2015: Zoeticx CEO to Speak during Open Health Panel at the Open Source Summit

Press Release | Zoeticx | July 26, 2015

Thanh Tran, CEO of Zoeticx will speak as a member of the Open Health panel discussion on Wednesday, July 29, at the upcoming OSEHRA Open Source Summit. His participation on the panel will be followed by a more extensive presentation on the topic of “Healthcare Open Access Architecture” to take place during one of the breakout sessions. The OSEHRA Summit, now in its 4th year, has become the leading conference addressing issues of open solutions, open source, collaboration, transparency, and innovation in healthcare information technology. The conference will take place at the Bethesda Marriott North Hotel and Conference Center in Maryland from July 29 to the 31st. Keynote speaker at the conference will be Robert A. McDonald, Secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

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Secretary McDonald Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun: VA is critical to medicine and vets

Press Release | US Department of Veterans Affairs | October 24, 2014

During preparation for my confirmation as secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), I was repeatedly asked, "Why doesn't VA just hand out vouchers allowing veterans to get care wherever they want?" For a department recovering from serious issues involving health care access and scheduling of appointments, that was a legitimate question. After nine weeks at VA, travel to 31 VA facilities in 15 cities, discussions with hundreds of veterans and VA clinicians, meetings with 75 Members of Congress, two hearings before the Senate and House Veterans' Affairs committees and dozens of meetings with Veterans Service Organizations and other stakeholders, I can answer that question. Veterans need VA, and many more Americans benefit from VA. Read More »

VA Admits: Sick People Need Clinicians, Not More Managers

Arvind Cavale | Rebel.MD | September 9, 2014

The new VA secretary, Robert A. McDonald, speaking to a room-full of reporters, acknowledged for the first time that “the department needed to hire “tens of thousands of new doctors, new nurses, new clinicians”...

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VA Secretary McDonald Outlines Steps For VA Transformation at Institute of Medicine Annual Meeting

Press Release | US Department of Veterans Affairs | October 20, 2014

As the Nation’s foremost advisory body in medicine and healthcare, you know that the Department of Veterans Affairs is in the midst of overcoming problems involving access to healthcare. We own them, and we’re fixing them. But I know you also know that VA has a legacy of excellence, innovation, cutting-edge research, and achievements in healthcare delivery that is as broad and historically significant as it is profound—and often unrecognized. There’s something else. Right now, VA has before it perhaps its greatest opportunity to enhance care for Veterans in its history. Read More »

Vets Call for VA EHR Optimization, Interoperability Advances

Sara Heath | EHR Intelligence | September 15, 2016

The Department of Veterans Affairs needs an overhaul of its Veterans Information Systems and Technology Architecture (Vista) EHR — either in the form of EHR optimization or a commercial EHR replacement — to improve care quality for American veterans, several veterans groups have claimed. Purchasing a commercial EHR may alleviate some of the VA’s issues in developing a robust health IT system, Harvey suggested. Few hearing witnesses disagreed that VA’s health IT infrastructure and EHR system need a significant overhaul...

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