This morning I ran across the report below.

Big Payback For VA Health IT

The Veterans Affairs Department has invested more than $4 billion on its Veterans Health Information System and Technology Architecture (VistA) during the last two decades. But the payback the department has received has pretty much exceeded those costs, Health Affairs Journal reported in its April issue. As of 2007, VistA's savings and benefits totaled about $3 billion more than the amount VA has invested in it, according to the Health Affairs study, which was conducted by the Center for IT Leadership at Partners Healthcare in Boston. -->-->-->

Which, as the Health Affairs Journal is an online subscription site, led me to do a quick search, coming up with the following report on the study that gives more information then the one above announcing the Journals findings.

VA spends more, achieves higher levels of health IT adoption

In comparing health IT within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to the standards in the private sector, researchers from the Center for IT Leadership in Charlestown, Mass., determined that the VA spent proportionately more on IT than the private healthcare sector spent, but it achieved higher levels of IT adoption and quality of care. The study, appearing in the April edition of HealthAffairs, estimated the potential value of the VA’s health IT investments to be approximately $3.09 billion in cumulative benefits net of investment costs. The investments, consisting of EHRs, radiological imaging and laboratory and medication ordering and administration, known as the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), is associated with significant reductions in unnecessary and redundant care, process efficiencies and improvements in care, said Colene M. Byrne, senior analyst and lead author of the study.

Through a benchmarking analysis, the authors sought to compare levels of health IT system adoption by the VA to the private sector, as well as whether this adoption is associated with changes in the care process and the level of health IT spending that is necessary to sustain adoption. -->-->-->

Which also led me to this Wall Street Journal blog report on same.

Study: VA’s Computer Systems Cost Billions, but Have Big Payback

Anyone who follows health IT knows that the Department of Veterans Affairs often gets high marks for being an early adopter of electronic medical systems in the U.S. Now a study in Health Affairs tries to put a price-tag on what the VA systems collectively called Vista, for Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture. The bottom line: “We conservatively estimate that the VA’s investments in the four health IT systems studied yielded $3.09 billion in cumulative benefits net of investment costs by 2007,” say the authors, a team from Center for IT Leadership at Partners Healthcare in Charlestown, Mass. The results looks at measures such as reduced workloads, freed workspace and savings from items such as unneeded medical tests and avoided hospital admissions. -->-->-->

VistA: Veterans Health Information System and Technology Architecture

I've been saying, as have many veterans, and pushing for more front end investments into making the VA Care System the best in the World ever since coming back from Vietnam at the end of my four year tour of service to this country and the horrendous problems our brothers and sisters were having in getting care, while at the same time many having little to no problems out of the norm. You don't fund on the front and keep ahead of the advancing technology, by being a part of that advancement, it costs much more then double to play catchup. With our want for Wars of Choice, Vietnam and now two more long invasions and occupations, the VA Health Care should have been the envy of the world in care as well as research and teaching decades ago.

There's one political ideology, seeming to even have lost much of that ideology in the past decades, that has hindered the needs of the VA as well as our other government agencies, which has ended up in a constant state of catchup and not in saving money and extending that into the private sector and further, as to the VA they love war and playing tough as a king of the mountain country but hate paying for anything, that which they want and use and especially the results of the wars they push to wage!

If you've been following the Veterans Administration the past year plus you'll know that there's been an awful lot of movement to bring that Agency into the 21st Century. As soon as Gen. Shinseki was confirmed he hit the pavement running forward, even with many he brought in to help in his administration. Sure there's been problems, many coming from studies of what wasn't being done in the previous administration while waging two more wars, but taking on the problems head first and seeking to minimize the problems and erase them. many of these problems are also coming from what wasn't done for decades and in once again playing catchup to not only correct but to make the Agency run better and smother thus Saving Money as well as giving the best back to those who gave up so much in service to their country as well as what their families sacrificed.

On another note abit of more on profitting from questionable investments that many fear but do receive payback and thus savings.


Now where the Hell is all that Private Capital as the money prophet's stated would keep our economy number one in the world if only we let the few at the top reap the benefits of our work, and everything else like they and their companies not forking over their fair share, and they in turn would 'trickle down' that wealth so all would prosper!!!