April 20, 2009 by admin.

By Bob Brewin   04/16/09 05:23 pm ET

I’m picking up strong signals that the Obama administration may tap Dr. Stephen Ondra, professor of neurological surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, as the new under secretary for health at the Veterans Health Administration.Ondra did his residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and served with an Amy medical unit stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. He also was an early backer of President Obama, and signed on with the his campaign’s Veterans Advisory Committee in November 2007.Ondra also is a heavy hitter when it comes to supporting Democrats running for office, contributing a total of $48,155 in 2007 and 2008.I hear that Ondra already has started work for VA as a senior policy advisor to Secretary Eric Shinseki, and his nomination as under secretary for health will come real soon now. If, tapped, Ondra will replace Dr. Michael Kussman, a Bush administration holdover who announced his resignation this month in the wake of the collapse of the eight-year-old, $167 million project to develop a core computer application to schedule patient appointments at VA hospitals.VA is supposed to give me an update on plans to replace that patient scheduling system anytime now, one of a mess of unanswered queries stacked up at the department like airplanes circling Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in a blizzard.

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April 20, 2009 by admin.

I received an email request from Jewish War Veteran member Captain Michael Feigenblatt, USAF who is assigned to Baghdad, Iraq (International Zone) for a twelve month tour. 

When Captain Feigenblatt returns to the states he will be attempting with his wife a 3-day Breast Cancer Komen Walk for the Cure “Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk.”  The walk will take place in Atlanta, GA, October 23-25, 2009. Captain Feigenblatt would like the JWV to advertise to members and friends that he needs your support by to donations to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, “Breast cancer 3-Day,” This is our opportunity to support another JWV member in harmsway and a cause that impacts Jewish women at a higher rate than the general population.

See website: http://www.the3day.org/site/TR/Walk/AtlantaEvent?px=3203204&pg=personal&fr_id=1291

Participant: Captain Michael Anton FeigenblattParticipant ID: 3203204Event: 1291

Make checks out to: Breast Cancer 3-DayAddress: Breast cancer 3-DayPO Box 650543Dallas, TX 75265-0543

If you would like to donate by credit card a payment form is on the website.

Colonel Nelson L. Mellitz, USAF, RetJWV Outreach Chairperson for the Next Generation

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April 3, 2009 by admin.

By Bob Brewin 04/02/2009Veterans Affairs Department Secretary Eric Shinseki launched a review of the department’s information technology programs on March 23, focusing on the $167 million patient scheduling program, which has failed to deliver a usable system after eight years in development, NextGov has learned.Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said at a press briefing on Thursday that either the full committee or the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will schedule a hearing on the near collapse of the Replacement Scheduling Application Development Program, which an internal VA memo said “has not developed a single scheduling capability it can provide to the field, nor is there any expectation of delivery in the near future.”Filner said he wants to hold the hearing before top executives from the Bush administration leave the department at the end of April. The congressman expressed frustration that VA officials did not alert him to problems with the scheduling system, which he first learned about from a March 31 article on NextGov.Shinseki directed VA staffers provide him with comprehensive review of the scheduling application by April 9, and planned a congressional briefing for April 10, according to internal memos provided to NextGov.Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said the scheduling system is needed to reduce long patient wait times at VA facilities. The organization released a report in February that said one-quarter of the 105,000 Afghanistan and Iraq veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder had to wait more than 30 days for an appointment at the Veterans Health Administration’s 168 medical centers and 800 clinics.VHA policy says veterans with serious service-related disabilities must be seen by medical staff within 30 days of their requested appointment date. But a September 2007 report by the VA inspector general said 27 percent of the veterans who had to wait more than 30 days for appointments had serious service-related disabilities, such as amputations and panic attacks.VHA does not have the ability to properly manage canceled appoints, the inspector general said in a December 2008 survey of 10 clinics. This resulted in 4.9 million open appointment slots in 2008 that could have been used by other patients at those clinics, according to the report.Besides frustrating patients with long wait times, this management dilemma hits VHA in the pocketbook. At the 10 clinics surveyed, the IG determined 830,000 appointments were canceled more than three days in advance, and estimated the cost of those unfilled appointments at $151 annually.Keith Decker, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Delaware, who wrote a paper on patient scheduling, said developing such a system is a complex task, but not one that should take eight years.He said the need to schedule patients at multiple clinics and then correlate those appointments with staff schedules is a computational challenge with many variables.Decker said VA should approach the project in phases, with each part fielded and tested before the next bit of software is rolled out. Since the department has a problem maximizing the use of openings that result from canceled appointments, that might be a good place to start, he said.Dr. Michael Kussman, VHA undersecretary for health, detailed such an incremental approach in a March 20 memo to Stephen Warren, VA acting assistant secretary for information and technology. The goal was to have a less functional but workable scheduling system fielded by September.But testing this less functional system resulted in significant failures, Kussman said, and the scheduling program has been suspended while VHA examines alternatives, including the use of a commercial patient scheduling system.

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