VA issues VistA improvement awards

Jun 1, 2010

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced the winners of an internal competition for ideas to use information technology to improve services to veterans. Sixteen out of the 26 ideas involve improvements to the VistA clinical IT system and its computerized patient record system (CPRS).

The Veterans Health Administration/Office of Information and Technology (VHA/OIT) Innovation Competition is designed to involve VA employees and the private sector in the development of new improvements in the administration's ability to provide service to veterans. The competition's winners represent 23 different VA medical centers, program offices, and regional healthcare entities from 17 states.

The chosen innovations will receive funding and support for prototype development and implementation, according to the announcement by Eric Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs. The following items are some of the recommendations in the healthcare IT sector:

An online radiology protocol tool integrated within CPRS/VistA Imaging
Intelligent computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and rules-based algorithms to reduce unnecessary and duplicate diagnostic tests
The ability to display a patient picture in CPRS
A "parking" feature for outpatient prescriptions to prevent waste
Integration between a VistA surgery package and CPRS
An e-discharge pilot program
CPRS enhancements for veteran-centered care
Online tracking of mail prescription delivery
Expanded search functions in CPRS
Shared verified insurance information via use of the master patient index

News of the awards follows recommendations issued last month to halt development on VistA, made in a report issued by the Industry Advisory Council of the American Council for Technology advising the VA about ways to meet the future healthcare IT needs of its more than 900 healthcare treatment facilities.

The council strongly recommended that the VA refrain from making any improvements to VistA with the exception of addressing necessary patient safety concerns. The report suggested that the VA should abandon all of the software code used for VistA, and programmers should rewrite VistA's code using contemporary open-source, proprietary, and off-the-shelf commercial software.