...Department of Veterans Affairs is the biggest healthcare system in the United States, and serves in many ways to veterans of all branches of our armed forces and the VA main function is to provide healthcare, primary long care instead of acute care in each VA facility around our nation and in some countries around the globe. The VA has other functions such as payments to veterans and dependents and also provides a dignified burial to those brave men and women who served with dignity and valor during peace and wartimes (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2014). The VA takes care to approximately 5.8 million patients annually in more than 900 sites, including 152 medical centers and more than 700 community-based outpatient clinics. Annually, it provides primary care to more than 5 million patients, “Its hospitals, health care centers, ambulatory care centers and community based outpatient clinics are organized into 21 regional networks, known as VA integrated services networks, or VISNs, which control the management and funding of local hospitals and clinics. Many of the VA’s tertiary care centers are affiliated with academic medical centers, which, according to VA estimates, enable the health system to train at least 75 percent of the nation’s physicians—either as medical students or residents (The Commonwealth Fund , September 2011).” The VA healthcare system was created around the Civil War and is considered the oldest healthcare system in the United States. It was created to provide...
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...Forecasting the Future Female Veteran Population and Their Increased Use of the VA Medical System - VPT2 Data-Driven Decision Making - C207 August 12th, 2015 Forecasting the Future Female Veteran Population and Their Increased Use of the VA Medical System The use of the Veterans Affairs medical care system has significantly increased over the last decade due to two recent wars and an aging Vietnam Veteran population. As females have been accepted in all roles into the military, their population within the military has progressively multiplied over the last three decades. Since females in general typically use healthcare at a higher rate than their male counterparts, it is necessary to ascertain if the female veteran population and their usage of the VA is trending in the direction of growth. Should the numbers be trending in a manner that shows significant growth, a further in-depth study would be indicated to determine future growth beyond the course of this analysis could provide. This trending information as well as future studies, should they be indicated, would assist VA management in determining future monetary and staffing budgets. Data Collection To evaluate the potential for growth within the female veteran population, data was collected online from: Veterans Affairs (VA) detailing veteran population statistics by state, age group, and gender; a Women’s Health Veteran’s Affairs Publication detailing the socio-demographic, utilization, and Costs...
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...the war front; some of which are known to be carcinogenic in nature. There is also increasing pressure from the war Veterans advocacy groups to highlight what they perceive as either emerging health outcome or unusual presentation of known health conditions among recently deployed war Veterans. There is however, no unified figures of the prevalence of cancers among recently deployed war Veterans as most of the studies were incidence study focused on single type of cancer. Cancer remain a disease of major public health important, and therefore there is urgent need to have an accurate prevalence figure among recently deployed war Veterans for proper healthcare planning. This is why this prevalence study is very important in meeting this...
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..."Department Of Veterans Affairs" (2016) website. As of today there are 1,700 Veteran hospitals and clinics The "U.S. Department Of Veterans Affairs " (2016). Today veteran hospitals use VistA, which is VA's award winning Health Information Technology (IT) system. It provides an integrated inpatient and outpatient electronic health record for VA patients, and administrative tools to help VA deliver the best quality medical care to Veterans. VistA is also used to manage multimedia for cardiology, radiology and pathology. It is able to provide video clips of each scan as well as images. Veteran hospitals today also use BCMA barcode medication administration system. The BCMA is used when a patient needs medication; each nurse scans the patient bracelet as well as the medication that will be given to the patient to verify this is the correct medication for that patient. Vistas became the instrument of change at the VA in the mid 1900’s and since this change Veteran hospitals and care facilities have noticed a drastic change in patient care in health care records. Veteran healthcare facilities started up doing the Civil War in 1865. Veteran hospital and healthcare facilities started off just like any other hospital or healthcare facility by using paper and writing down patient information and later filing that patient information. Twenty years ago veteran hospitals used the...
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...reimbursement programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare (Gapenski, (2008). As the American population ages, the demand for increasingly efficient health care organizations is essential to a positive outcome for the industry. Health care is one of the world’s most complex undertakings, there are innumerable processes at every level. For-profit Financial Environment For-profit organizations must make a return on investments and services rendered. They must meet their obligations and must satisfy private investors and shareholders (Finkler, & Ward, 2006). With a return on investment being one of the top priorities, motivation can be fostered to provide high efficiency with a superior product. In this case, a superior service. Mountain Star Healthcare Mountain Star facilities are owned and operated by the larger parent company Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). This private company began trading shares in the stock exchange in 2011 (Hospital Corporation of America, 2013). Their goal is to approach service expansions with the patient put first. Mountain Star is placing conveniently located outpatient clinics in the surrounding communities. These individual clinics might include imaging, surgery, and physician clinics (Mountain View Hospital, 2013). Unique Financial Policies For-profit organizations are treated as private corporations or a financial variant. Because they are private entities, they are subject to all...
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...and every individual that served this country should be considered and respected whether they are past or present as remarkable individuals, it is because of them that we are allowed to be free and walk around in this great country of ours. Although, these feelings are the feelings of many it is sad that our veterans are not being completely supported by the people that they have put their lives on the line for. It is a disturbing situation when we as a people can walk down the street and see our veterans homeless and going without and barely receiving healthcare or getting overlooked for benefits and treatments. Recently, there has been a story in the news that many veterans had passed away while waiting on a secret list. It had been announced that at least 40 United States veterans in the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System had died while waiting in hopes of being treated by a physician, however it was shown that the VA had not been governing them-selves accordingly when it comes to properly listing and treating the veterans appropriately. The list was a part of a secret scheme that was designed by veteran’s affairs mangers in the Phoenix area that were specifically trying to hide the fact that there were from the range of 1,400 to 1,600 ill veterans that had been forced to wait months to...
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...sociological, cultural, and financial problems. But, in the end most would agree that the issues are related to managerial more than technological problems. Experience and research implemented by those with failures have identified the most important concerns being,” what constitutes success and what is failure?” Their question is what contributes to making successful or unsuccessful systems? How do these companies use their system failures to enhance learning opportunities for continued company improvement? How should they study this success or failure? The determination was related at workshops directed by the AMIA to enhance opportunities for future successes, with a research agenda and recommendations. The AMIA was convicted to take a leadership role and come up with practical projects that would likely succeed in a health care setting. Introduction In February 2009 Congress appropriated $20 billion for health information technology as a part of the President’s stimulus package. Then the United State joined with other countries to benefit from healthcare technology. Because of the changes made to Medicare and private insurance plans, new paradigm for payments have been made to reflect Value-Based Purchasing (VBP), or pay for performance initiatives (P4P). These initiatives rely on electronic health records to document clinical services. There is growing concerns about how that technology is ultimately designed and deployed. The United...
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...Evolution of Health Care Information Systems Wendy F Superable HCS/533 January 26,2015 Evolution of Health Care Information Systems The world has changed a lot in the past 20 years. The advancement of new technology and the Internet has transformed the way we work and even where we do our work from. The evolution of technology affected a lot of things and some of those are information exchange and health care. Health information technology has enormous potential in reducing health care cost and improving outcomes by changing how healthcare is delivered. According to World Health Organization (2008), “The health information system collects data from the health sector and other relevant sectors, analyses the data and ensures their overall quality, relevance”. In 2010, when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and HITECH Act was signed into law by President Obama, health care IT became the central component for a safe, high quality health care system. The goal is to have a nationwide healthcare system transformation. Hospitals, health care providers and other health care institutions are mandated to adopt electronic health records (EHR) system to improve safety and quality and contain cost and inefficiencies. The government even has incentive programs for those institutions and providers that have become “meaningful users” of the EHR system. Soon the government will also penalize those who will not adopt the system (Glaser, J.P., Lee, F.W., & Wager, K.A...
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...VA Northern Indiana Health Care System Stephanie Dubois WGU Indiana Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is part of the Global War on Terror. The US has sent a lot of soldiers to Afghanistan as a result of the events on September 11, 2001. Some of those soldiers sustained injuries and trauma from incidents while in Afghanistan. When those and many other uninjured sol soldiers were returned to the US, and being released from whichever military branch they had been serving, they were then left to figure out what steps to take next, with little or no help. Where do they go to get medical care? What benefits do I get on the outside? Who can I talk to about my benefits? I it would be scary to have all your essentials provided for you to not knowing if or when your next paycheck will come if you were seriously injured while serving in the military. The VA Northern Indiana Health Care System (VANIHCS) instituted a Seamless Transition Program that assisted returning OEF soldiers “transition” back to civilian life. Prior to the implementation of this program, facilities weren’t capable of handling the influx of veterans. There were so many US Military who went over to Iraq and Afghanistan that are now in need of care from the VA Health System. The Seamless Transition Program has now expanded to include Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND). Veterans are offered assistance in a variety ways from filing for Compensation and Pension benefits to finding...
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...“Transformational change is associated with organizational restructuring and represents a broad and complex radical shift, as the organization “reinvents itself.” (Johnson, 2009) In the healthcare industry, things are changing every day. New technology, medication, and the way we deal with patients changes on a daily basis. Change is necessary because there are people behind the scenes always finding new ways to better improve the quality of care we give to our patients as well as creating new technology to help assist with the way we treat our patients. Adding and taking away from departments are changing as well. With change we may want to be uninterested with it, supportive of it, to be a participate in it, or unreceptive about it. Whether the case may be, change has increased and will continue to happen whether we like it or not. Throughout this paper I will discuss two healthcare organizations that have experienced change. “Effective change has been characterized as unfreezing old behaviors, introducing new ones, and refreezing them.” (Al-Abir, 2007) Change can be random, rare, occasional, or continuous. Change that are predictable allow preparation time, whereas change that is unpredictable may be difficult for everyone to respond effectively too. Since in healthcare changes happen so fast, they are more than likely predicable. Even though change is recognized, the employees what to be able to understand why change is occurring and how it will affect them in...
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...worksheet and will describe the financial structure of each financial environment. This paper will also address the policies that make this financial environment unique and identify which financial management practices are prevalent in the financial environment. This paper will also explain why effective financial management is more difficult in health care than in other industries. Entities FP, NFP, and government facilities exist throughout the country. This paper identifies the first entity FP healthcare organization JFK Medical Center. The second entity is Naples Community Hospital (NCH), a NFP healthcare organization, and the third entity is the Veterans Administration, a government funded facility. JFK Medical Center is a 460-bed acute care medical/ surgical hospital specializing in cardiovascular care, oncology services, neuroscience, bariatric, and orthopedics. It is located at the heart of West Palm Beach, Florida (“Jfk Medical Center”, n.d.). The NCH Healthcare system, a NFP organization, has multiple facilities consisting of two hospitals, dozens of medical facilities throughout Collier County and...
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...Dual Diversity Paper 1 Dual Diversity Paper BSHS/422 Cultural Diversity and Special Population Dual Diversity Paper 2 Minority Disabled Veteran population are the Veterans that have been identified by their ethnic background. These Veterans are men and women that are African Americans, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Hispanic, Native American/ Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian. The United States census bureau facts and statistics regarding United States Veterans, in 2008 reported that there were 2.3 million African American Veteran s, 1.1 million were Hispanic, 276,000 Asian; 160,000 American Indian or Alaska Native; 27, 000 were native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. It has been predicted by the Department of Veteran Affairs that it is expected to see 25 percent of the living Veteran population will be minorities by the year 2021. The Veterans Administration has been experiencing an increase of disability claims since the fiscal year of 2011. In 2011, 1 million Disability Compensation and Pension benefits that Veterans were already receiving benefits. There are both physical disabilities and mental health disabilities that affect the United States...
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...Professional Development of Nursing Professionals A new prospective has been initiated for the future of nursing. With the common goal of patient centered care, that is created around a specific patient. The U.S Health Care System needs to be transformed, which will require development of new roles for nurses and many other healthcare positions. Nurses must recognize what this means for their specific role and what different educational changes need to be made. Nurses stepping into leadership roles will also be a necessary and vital piece to the success of nursing in the near future (Institute of Medicine, 2011). The introduction of The Affordable Care Act of 2010 has placed a new emphasis on changing the healthcare system. With focusing on the use of primary care, wellness and prevention, and transitional care, while decreasing the use of specialty and acute care. A major focus of the future plans is the need for nurses to use and practice to their full potential, based on educational level and training. When nurses use all of their training, competencies, and education, they will provide top-quality healthcare while reducing mistakes and promoting safety (Institute of Medicine, 2001). The U. S. currently has a problem with a primary care professional shortage. The need for more medical professionals is substantial. While in the past, Physicians made up a large amount of care providers, today the use of NPs and physician assistants has developed rapidly. The increase of advanced...
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...to food, water, housing and conditions of life (Williams, S., Torrens, P. 2008). There was no technology available to deal with the largest health issues. Because there was no social organization for health care, individuals had to rely upon themselves and charity to deal with sickness and disease. This lack of a social organization forced people to care for their own families despite the fact that they had very little factual knowledge. By 1900, many of the acute individual ailments were slowly being controlled, so the new system turned its attention to acute illnesses affecting individuals versus entire groups. During this time period, technology was slowly advancing and started the rapid growth of basic medical sciences. Slowly strides were being made for the government to care for those individuals who could not care for themselves. Also, people became a more informed about general healthcare issues. By World War II advancements in healthcare allowed the medical community to turn it’s attention to chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and strokes. This was...
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...soldiers are given they continue to have extreme nightmares of death and fear. Soldier that are diagnose with PTSD normally gets two to four hours of sleep a night. Beginning with the first step in the research process is to identifying the problem. Our dilemma was soldier Behavioral Health Care beyond Army life. Data was gathered from our Mental Health Department and Traumatic Brain Injury database. After we identify the problem a Case Review Committee meeting was conducted with the hospital Behavioral Health Providers to discuss and analyze the gathered data. The outcome was to set up a Case Review Committee with department heads at the local VA hospital that cares for soldier mental health care after the Army. In Collaboration with doctors and the Veteran Military Coordinators at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare...
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