Please take one giant step backward
One of the key factors contributing to the success of the Veterans Administration health-care system has been a computerized health-records system that VA workers developed themselves and continue to improve. In an era of skyrocketing health-costs, the system, called VistA, has actually helped reduce the VA's health-care costs, as well as improving the accuracy of prescriptions to the point at which it almost literally can't get any better.
If you worked in the government, wouldn't you want to expand this system and make even more and better use of it? One would think. But, as Maggie Mahar reports at the Century Foundation's Health Beat Blog, one would be wrong. The Department of Defense, which must coordinate care for military folks with the VA, has gotten its own, proprietary (read: expensive and less flexible) system from a big military contractor rather than just adopting VistA. What's more, although there are good reasons not to -- and although VistA is actually being adopted in the private sector now -- the VA itself may be moving away from VistA.
Mahar provides some good links, some credible analysis, a warning about what's happening and a pledge to keep following the issue. Go read her.
