US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

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VA Joins NATE and the Blue Button for Consumers (NBB4C) Trust Bundle

Press Release | National Association for Trusted Exchange | June 9, 2016

The National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) today welcomed its newest member, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). By joining NATE and participating in the NATE Blue Button for Consumers (NBB4C) Trust Bundle, VA is demonstrating its commitment to enabling its Veterans to send their health data to the consumer-facing application (CFA) of their choice. 

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VA to Kick Off Hunt For New Patient Scheduling System Next Month

Jack Moore | Nextgov | August 26, 2014

The Department of Veterans Affairs is seeking a “cutting-edge” commercial, off-the-shelf scheduling system to replace the clunky legacy module that helped mire the agency in controversy over long wait times faced by veterans seeking care. By the end of September, VA plans to issue a solicitation for a new system to manage the scheduling of veterans’ medical appointments. Read More »

29th VistA Community Meeting: Details of Upcoming Technical Conference

The upcoming 29th VistA Community Meeting (VCM), to take place June 2-4 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, is shaping up as a breakthrough gathering of technical experts on VistA and community members. The conference is bringing senior leaders from several US Federal Government agencies, including the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS) together with technical leaders of the VistA community to collaborate on improving the VistA and RPMS EHRs.

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A Tale of Two Epidemics — HCV Treatment among Native Americans and Veterans

Brigg Reilley and Jessica Leston | The New England Journal of Medicine | August 31, 2017

In light of ongoing debates about health care budgets and rising drug prices, a current public health crisis can provide useful insights. For patients who get their health care through two separate federal agencies, the hepatitis C virus (HCV) epidemic is unfolding in vastly different ways. In recent years, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system has mounted a response to HCV that should be the envy of any health system, public or private. On the other hand, the Indian Health Service (IHS), an agency that serves American Indians and Alaska Natives, is struggling to meet the needs of its patients with HCV...

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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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Accelerating Identification and Tracking of Pandemic Disease Outbreaks

A national biosurveillance program requires the collaboration of multiple federal, state and local agencies to provide a comprehensive view of a health-related event. Bitscopic's Praedico™ biosurveillance platform breaks down the data barriers among organizations with an extensible architecture that can incorporate any kind of data. The platform also delivers high performance by incorporating the latest technologies such as big data, NoSQL databases, and machine learning. Read More »

Advancing the Coordination of Health IT for Military and Government

Press Release | Defense Strategies Institute | August 12, 2016

Defense Strategies Institute is proud to announce their 11th DoD/VA and Gov Health IT Summit occurring on October 4-5, 2016. With the central theme of “Advancing the Coordination of Health IT,” the Summit will bring together senior leaders from DoD, VA, HHS, Federal and State agencies, along with leaders from Industry and Academia that support them, for two days of Government briefings and informal discussions in their "Town Hall" setting in Alexandria, VA. DSI has created a Summit that will bring together a variety of stakeholders in order to build out two days of discussion and debates that tackle many of the areas involved in modernizing the DoD and VA health systems in order to provide better care to our warfighters and veterans.

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Alaska a Model for National VA

Senator Mark Begich | Fairbanks Daily News | June 29, 2014

I was disgusted in February when Republicans killed a bill that, among other provisions, would have opened more than two dozen new VA medical facilities to help a health system overburdened by the influx of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan...The terrible headlines of recent weeks tell us just how much we need those facilities, and why more resources are needed. Perhaps this time the full Senate will step up and vote to improve the VA system.

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Allscripts Joins Race for DOD EHR Contract as $11B Offer Looms

Jennifer Bresnick | EHR Intelligence | June 26, 2014

Allscripts, CSC, and Hewlett-Packard have announced that they are teaming up against Epic and IBM to bid for a massive Department of Defense EHR overhaul, it looks like new battle lines are being drawn in the quest to secure up to $11 billion from the ten to fifteen year contract to revamp the ailing health IT infrastructure of one of the most complex healthcare systems in the world. Read More »

American Samoa Medical Center Authority Selects OpenVista as Public Health EHR

Press Release | Medsphere Systems Corporation | May 20, 2014

American territory will use VistA-based solution to meet Meaningful Use and support broad public health services for residents Read More »

An Epic conflict of interest

Pejman Yousefzadeh | The Daily Caller | December 27, 2011

Meet Judy Faulkner. She is the founder and CEO of Epic Systems Corporation in Wisconsin. She is also a member of the GAO Health Information Technology Policy Committee and an advisory board member of the Journal of Healthcare Information Management. She is also politically active...The $787 billion stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama in February 2009 included $19 billion for healthcare information technology (HIT), and created the Health IT Policy Committee, whose job it was to advise the federal government on spending the $19 billion allocation. The committee was to have one member responsible for representing information technology vendors. Judy Faulkner was designated as that member.

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Atlas Research Wins $85M Veterans Affairs BPA to Provide Program Management and Lean Six Sigma Support

Press Release | Atlas Research | October 21, 2015

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Enterprise Integration (formerly the Office of Policy and Planning, Enterprise Program Management Office) has established a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with Atlas Research to provide a wide range of professional support services to bring program/project management and process improvement best practices to critical VA programs...Atlas Research will support the implementation of the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 (“Choice Act”) and key initiatives under the MyVA reorganization plan. The transformation will impact millions of internal and external stakeholders as VA strives to provide Veterans with seamless, integrated, and responsive services.

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Been there, Done that, Doesn’t Work: Veterans Health Administration IT goes back in time

If you have an interest in the worlds of economics, healthcare or technology, here’s a story that’s emerged this month that is worth noting for the record books. In the US, amidst the chaos of the Trump administration, yet another mistake has been made this month. For the record, it is worth noting that the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration (VHA) ended up with a contract for a large IT solution for the next 10 years worth about $10 billion as of May 2018. On the face of it that may appear to be unremarkable news: just another big expensive contract for an IT system. Yet there is a part sad/part silly dimension to it that is well worth flagging up at this point.

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Before Buying New Scheduling System, Va Plans To Kick The Tires

Jack Moore | NextGov | November 17, 2014

A request for proposal for the new scheduling system is “going to hit the street no later than" Nov. 21, VA Chief Information Officer Stephen Warren told reporters during a press call last week. The agency’s search for a new system is a “free and open” procurement, Warren said. Companies don’t need to have a preexisting relationship with the agency to compete.

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BT Bets on Medsphere's 'Open' EHR

Bernie Monegain | Healthcare IT News | January 13, 2015

Medsphere Systems and BT have agreed to jointly promote Medsphere's OpenVista EHR under a software-as-a-service, or SaaS, model. The goal, executives from both companies say, is to relieve hospitals of the many costly and burdensome IT responsibilities.

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