Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough says the joint VA-Defense Department rollout of the Oracle Cerner EHR at a federal health care center in Chicago last month "has been on the high level of expectations." McDonough also said that it's been difficult to determine whether recent glitches were related to the EHR software or the Change Healthcare cyberattack.
The Department of Defense has given an ECAT contract to Cook Medical for implantable vascular medical devices, such as the Zilver PTX drug-eluting peripheral stent, Zenith aortic endografts and other vascular disease-related interventional devices. "With this contract, Cook implantable devices will be available to all US DOD hospitals in the US, Hawaii and Alaska and will expand to cover all overseas hospitals in the coming months," said Cook Medical VP of Supply Chain Ross Harvey.
Fifty Army Reserve medical professionals -- including nurses, surgeons, dentists and other medics -- will provide a range of healthcare services at six hospitals in the Pacific island territory of Samoa through April 24. The Soifua Manuia Medical Mission will also offer emergency response and casualty training to hospital personnel and first responders.
The Lebanon Veterans Affairs Medical Center is the first VA facility to gain approval to use theranostics to treat Veterans with metastatic prostate cancers and neuroendocrine tumors through a new, rigorous process. VA patients can move through the process of determining eligibility for treatment more easily than those in the private sector.
Research shows that a Medicare initiative called Chronic Care Management decreased patients' emergency department and inpatient visits and reduced total health spending, but only a small proportion of eligible enrollees have participated. A number of businesses have been started to help physicians participate, but physician uptake has still been low for reasons including lack of capacity to monitor patients outside office visits, high documentation requirements, and reluctance to require people to participate when they do not have a supplemental policy.
A heart failure telehealth program helped rural Navajo Nation patients increase their use of guideline-directed medical therapy, researchers reported in JAMA Internal Medicine. At study's end, most eligible patients were on appropriate medications, and 81% of those needing quadruple therapy were taking it. The model was applied to adults with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, and researchers said the program could be used effectively in other areas where care access is limited.
Greater use of non-invasive ventilation was tied to obstructive sleep apnea in Veterans hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2, but the risk was reduced in those who had received booster vaccines, investigators reported in Annals of the American Thoracic Society. The vaccines' protective effects did not differ according to patients' OSA status.
The next free AMSUS webinar is on Thursday, 25 April, at 12 pm ET: Project Golden Eagle, PTSD/Emergence Delirium: Maintaining Veteran and Employee Safety. Project Golden Eagle is a nurse-driven, quality improvement initiative to better assess for and communicate PTSD related behaviors specific to those Veterans most at risk for experiencing emergence delirium. Prescreened veterans receive a gold surgical cap and special logo-embossed ID bracelet to visually communicate the potential for emergence delirium. See AMSUS webinars for more information and to register; check back often for updates. Webinars are FREE and OPEN TO ALL!
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