The VA and Health Information Technology

Like many of today’s emerging health information professionals, I am also a veteran. My interest in the Veteran Administration’s health services approach to information technology is not merely academic and professional, it is also very personal.

From the perspective of a student who is only a few classes away from a basic associate’s degree in health information technology, and still a few semesters away from my bachelor’s in Healthcare Services administration, there are many important lessons to be learned from the Veteran Administration’s testing and implementation of information technology over the last couple of decades. Though much of this technological shift has been driven by legislation and regulation, there has also been a concerted push from both medical managers and administrators within the VA who recognize the error reduction, efficiency enhancement, and customer(patient) service amplification these technologies offer. In addition to proofing many of the early theories, practices and hardware/software aspects of health information technology, they are also a leading educator/trainer in the field of Health Information Management with a 2-year HIM internship program that is garnering increasing amounts of my interest and attention!

As a (future) professional in the field of Healthcare Administration, I am intrigued by the innovations in management and technology that are in the process of renovating (on-the-fly) not only healthcare, but business in general. Due to the VA’s position as one of the largest healthcare operations on the planet, it tends to establish the trends and birth the innovations that later become the standards and established practices of legislation, regulation and SOP throughout the rest of the healthcare industry, public and private. The Office of Health Information is the department of the VA which specifically addresses issues of how the VA is testing, adopting, and training its staff and managers in information technology.

Finally, as a veteran, who has been covered by the veteran’s administration healthcare system for many years now, I am extremely interested in how information technology is improving my healthcare and my interface with the VA medical system. The most immediate differences that I, personally, am aware of in the VA’s patient interface, is the ability to track my prescriptions and appointments through a secure internet connection, and the ability to contact my health care manager and general or treating physicians via a personal message system and generally receive a reply (and when needed a referral to the appropriate clinic) within a few days.

I’m sure my blog posts will frequent VA issues in the future, as I obviously have a multi-spectrum interest in the VA’s health and informatics involvements.