Veterans Healthcare System

Texas A M Health Science Center College of Medicine/ Scott White, Central Texas Veterans Healthcare System Medical Education Building 407 L, 2401 S. 31 st St. Temple, TX 76508 USA... 

The Veterans Healthcare System was an early adopter and innovator in applying lessons from NASA and industry to patient safety. 

Jai Moo Shin, George Sachs David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles and Veterans Administration Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System,... 

In the second study, Ruscio, Ruscio, and Keane (2002) examined the taxonicity of PTSD in a large sample of male combat veterans (N = 1,230), who were seen at the Behavioral Sciences Division of the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System s National Center for posttraumatic stress disorder between 1985 and 2000. All the participants completed the Mississippi scale (Keane, Caddell,. Taylor, 1988), a 35-item measure of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms rated on a five-point scale a subset of this sample (n = 841) was assessed with the Clinician Administered Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Scale (CAPS), an interview measure of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms that a clinician rates on a five-point scale. According to the CAPS, 68% of the sample qualified for a posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis. 

Boston Veterans Administration Healthcare System Associate Professor of Optometry New England College of Optometry Boston, Massachusetts... 

Despite these and other difficult questions, the stepped care approach fits well with our current knowledge about change in patterns of alcohol and drug use and about the economics of treatment delivery. Stepped care fits what we know because it fosters a scientifically based, individualized delivery of effective treatment in the most efficient, least restrictive, and least expensive way. Indeed, major forces in addiction treatment, represented by the model of addiction treatment matching of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (Gastfriend, 2003), and the substance-abuse treatment guidelines of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, take a stepped care approach. 

Access to clinical pharmacy services is a somewhat more difficult issue because barriers to these services are both geographic and financial. Because pharmacists cannot obtain a provider number to directly bill for clinical pharmacy services, it is difficult for them to receive the financial incentives necessary to make this service widely available. Furthermore, because financial incentives exist only for dispensing services, patients may have access to clinical pharmacists only in special environments such as inpatient hospitalization or in systems such as the Veterans Healthcare Administration (VHA) or HMOs. 

Dishman, B. Personal Communication on Approved Scope of Practice for Psychiatric Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at the Veteran s Administration Healthcare system, La, /olla, California , July 2001. 

The US Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Patient Safety (NCPS) of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which developed a new root cause analysis model to be used in the healthcare system consisting of assigning a safety assessment code to prioritise... 

Department of Veterans Affairs, Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, Nashville, Tennessee, USA " "Department of Cancer Biology, School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA "Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA... 

Some systems, such as the UnitedStates Veterans Affairs, have invested heavily in both financial and quality assessments and as a consequence can monitor and track quality over time. In many healthcare systems, a considerable amount of safety and quality data is collected, but this has relatively little impact on day-to-day practice. The problem in Britain at least is not the paucity of the data but that the available information is widely scattered and not easily accessible to clinical teams and managers. The Bristol Inquiry report for instance, concluded that Bristol was awash with data (Aylin et al, 2004). However, little of this information was available to parents and it did not help in the identification, prior to the Enquiry, of the problems brewing there. A central feature of the recent report by Darzi (2009) is that quality must be the defining principle of the British NHS and that quality needs to be systematically measured. 

We also recognize the fiaUowing individuals, most of whom serve at the sharp end, who participated in case study preparation either by giving us interviews or by writing material Allan Frankel, M.D., director of Patient Safety, Partners Health Care, and senior fellow for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Boston Caryl Lee, R.N., M.S.N., program director. Veterans Administration Center for Patient Safety, Ann Arbor, Michigan Katharine Luther, R.N., M.PA., director of performance improvement, and Ann-Claire France, Ph.D., former director for the center of healthcare improvement at Memorial Hermann Healthcare System,... 

Emergency Management Principles and Practices for Healthcare Systems. Washington, DC The Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management (ICDRM) at the George Washington University (GWU) for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA)/US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). June 2006. 

In another study, conducted in the US Veterans Affairs healthcare system, in adults over 60 years with depression, an examination of whether pain severity and interference with normal work activities moderated the effects of depression treatment response was undertaken [9]. In this study, patients were randomized to integrated care (care debvered in the primary care clinic, by a mental health professional) versus enhanced specialty referral care (care delivered in the 344 subspecialty clinic office) and results were examined... 

Note that while the healthcare systems in Canada and UK use socialized financing, they do not necessarily practice socialized medicine as patients have the option of obtaining healthcare at private clinics. The Medicare and Medicaid plans of the US healthcare can access private hospitals as well as clinics. In contrast, healthcare delivery to US military veterans is the responsibility of government owned providers that are also financed by the govermnent (tax payers). 

American Association of Retired Persons American Health Care Association American Hospital Association American Medical Association American Nurses Association American Pharmaceutical Association American Society of Health-System Pharmaeists American Society for Healthcare Risk Management Department of Veterans Affairs Food and Drug Administration Generic Pharmaceutical Industry Association Institute for Safe Medication Practices... 

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