health care quality

See the following -

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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Don Berwick's Newest Phase: Candidate, But Still Dr. Quality

Martha Bebinger | Kaiser Health News | August 29, 2013

Dr. Donald Berwick might be running for Governor of Massachusetts, but he's still got a foothold in his former life.  Berwick, most recently known as the acting chief of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, had a long record as the leading authority on health care quality, including being founder and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement...

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How VA Outsourcing Hurts Veterans

On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, announced that he had reached a compromise with John McCain and other Senate Republicans on how to fix whatever it is that needs fixing at the VA...the bill also contains one provision that is a significant concession to Republican enemies of government. If enacted, it would lower the quality of health care received by veterans while setting back the movement for health care delivery system reform generally.

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Improving Quality of Care: How the VA Outpaces Other Systems in Delivering Patient Care

Steven M. Asch, Elizabeth A. McGlynn, Mary M. Hogan, et al | RAND Corporation | December 21, 2004

In its 2001 report Crossing the Quality Chasm, the Institute of Medicine called for systematic reform to address shortfalls in U.S. health care quality. Recommended reforms included developing medical informatics infrastructure, a performance tracking system, and methods to ensure provider and manager accountability...How does the VA measure up against other U.S. health care providers? Read More »

Phillip Longman's Senate Testimony Before the The State of VA Health Care Hearings

Phillip Longman | U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs | May 14, 2014

We need to open up the VA and grow it, extending no-questions-asked eligibility not only to all vets but to their family members as well. This not only makes clinical sense, it also makes economic sense. So long as the VA remains one of, if not the most, cost- effective, scientifically driven, integrated health care delivery systems in the country, the more patients it treats, the better for everyone.

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RAND Corporation study: VA Health System Generally Delivers Higher-Quality Care Than Other Health Providers

Press Release | Rand Corporation | April 26, 2018

The VA health care system performs similar to or better than non-VA systems on most measures of inpatient and outpatient care quality, although there is high variation in quality across individual VA facilities, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Examining a wide array of commonly used measures of health care quality, researchers found that VA hospitals generally provided better quality care than non-VA hospitals and the VA's outpatient services were better quality when compared to commercial HMOs, Medicaid HMOs and Medicare HMOs...“Consistent with previous studies, our analysis found that the VA health care system generally provides care that is higher in quality than what is offered elsewhere in communities across the nation,” said Rebecca Anhang Price, lead author of the study and senior policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

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The ONC 10 Year Vision

On June 5th 2014, ONC released  “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: a 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure." The plan is divided in 3 year goals, 6 year goals, and 10 year goals. Five specific tactics support the strategies. Below is a summary of the report and a few comments from my Massachusetts experience that support the reasonableness of the ONC goals.

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