This is good coverage of what happened at the big New York 
VA hospital during storm Sandy. They lost their only MRI machine. It’s going to be a wait until March of next year before outpatients will be seen at the facility again. As stated in the video this is better news than what was originally reported that they didn’t know if it would re-open. The waiting for benefit times to kick in is horrendous and sad that our veterans have to endure. The VA does take some very hard hits and the fact that the waiting time to get benefits is so long is something that really needs to be fixed. As I keep saying “the short order code kitchen burned several years ago and everyone missed the fire sale” remains true in the fact that complex IT infrastructures take time and a lot of money. Here’s one story from back in 2010 where life insurers dug in. In 2009 alone, the families of U.S. soldiers and veterans were supposed to be paid death benefits totaling $1 billion immediately, according to their insurance policies and this was a secret profit center for insurers.
Veterans Administration Caught Blind Sided by Life Insurers – Death Benefit Accounts Used For Profits With Survivors Receiving Checks That Are No Good and Funds Not FDIC Insured
The goal was to get the wait time down and it keeps going up. It’s not just disability claims, burial and appeals are in
there too. Appeals take around two and a half years after the denial of the initial claim that took around 9 months. Here when you look back on some of the medical record technologies we use today, where did it begin, at the VA and some medical record programs such as Epic used portions of the original technologies and it was built on the data base used by the VA. There’s even a medical records program that is a restructured version that can be commercially used so we benefited from their technologies over and over. In contrast to see what is going on now is sad. Here’s a sample of some hospitals that have used the Vista system that was transposed into a commercial version. Lutheran Medical Center Goes Live with OpenVista Electronic Health Records In New York and 2 More In New Jersey Up Next
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One more item the VA has done well with is the Blue Button where at least one can get their medical records easy enough. So if you are a participant as a patient get the documentation you can. Here’s a story from a short while back when the systems at Walter Reed went down, smartphone and access to patient records to the rescue for both the patient and consulting doctor.
A Strong Case for the Veterans Affairs “Blue Button”–Patient Access To Their Medical Records–Role Model Employee From the Navy Recounts His Experience At Walter Reed Hospital–We Need to Hear More Like This
This is just really sad first of all for the soldiers returning and second of all we all forget where a lot of technologies we use today came from. I certainly hope we don’t see any more cuts for their benefits as what do they do, wait around for years and some have conditions that need treatment right away.
In the Los Angeles and Long Beach area when they
do get in for treatment I hear nothing but good things for the most part. Up in West Los Angeles, due to budgets again they have had to lease out part of their facilities to keep money coming in as well and there are lawsuits there. This is a huge parcel of land to where housing for vets was supposed to be added as well. I don’ they are killing a fat hog here with renting space but rather a sign of times with the current economic conditions to keep what they have going, again another sad state of affairs when it comes to taking care of US Veterans. Yes I have read the other side of this where the VA is accused of making millions of dollars on rent but they don’t tell you where those dollars get spent either. In the meantime the status of affairs both in New York and across the country are very sad in the time it takes to process claims and get benefits to soldiers. BD http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show#50153834
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