Mild TBI in the Warfighter

Most Service Members With Brain Injury Heal, Official Says 03/07/09. Mild traumatic brain injury, also known as a concussion, affects from 10 to 20 percent of service members returning from combat deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan. During a roundtable discussion at the Pentagon yesterday as part of "Brain Injury Awareness Month," Army Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Loree K. Sutton, director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, said more than 90 percent of servicemembers with TBI have concussions and recover quickly. Military Health System

Second Chance for Vets

Therapeutic Court for Veterans 03/05/09. A program spreading across the country is giving veterans charged with non-violent alcohol or drug-related offenses a second chance to get their lives back on track. VA

VA Claims Backlogs, Reimbursement for Nursing Home Care

Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Promises To Reduce Disability Claims Backlog; VA To Reimburse Certain Veterans for Nursing Home Care 03/05/09. Summaries of two recent developments related to health care for veterans appear below. KaiserNetwork.org

• Disability claims: Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki on Tuesday during a speech to the American Legion said that he has "taken on the issue of the backlog" of disability claims at VA but admitted that he does not understand the problem, CongressDaily reports. He said that he has begun to develop "a credible 2010 budget" for VA, adding that the current economic recession "will likely collide with the new demands," such as treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury among veterans. Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), a member of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) and Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also spoke at the conference and cited the need to reduce the backlog and improve treatment of PTSD and TBI (Kreisher, CongressDaily, 3/3).
  
  
• Nursing home care: VA officials recently sent letters to 137 state veterans nursing homes nationwide to announce plans to begin the implementation of a 2006 law that requires the department to reimburse certain veterans for the cost of care at such facilities, Long Island Newsday reports. Under the law, VA must reimburse veterans with a 70% or higher service-related disability for the full cost of care at such facilities. According to the letter, VA will begin to issue reimbursements under the law within 90 days (Evans, Long Island Newsday, 3/3).

VAOIG Inspection of Salt Lake City VA

Healthcare Inspection Alleged Continuity of Care Issues and Questionable Death Salt Lake City VA Medical Center, Salt Lake City, Utah 03/04/09. The purpose of this inspection was to determine the validity of allegations regarding failure to provide continuity of care for a patient and the questionable death of that patient at the Salt Lake City VA Medical Center, Salt Lake City, Utah. We substantiated that there was a disruption in continuity of care when the patient returned home from the first hospitalization. VAOIG

Telehealth

VA Uses Telehealth Technology to Bring Care Home 03/04/09. As Congress looks to craft a healthcare reform bill designed to improve the nation’s health and stem the rising costs of healthcare, it is looking to the Department of Veterans Affairs in hopes the agency can serve as a model in some areas, specifically technology and telehealth, and in providing care to patients outside of the traditional hospital system. U. S. Medicine

New Book on TBI Care - Free Online

Systems Engineering to Improve Traumatic Brain Injury Care in the Military Health System (2009) 03/04/09. This book makes a strong case for taking advantage of the best of two disciplines--health care and operational systems engineering (a combination of science and mathematics to describe, analyze, plan, design, and integrate systems with complex interactions among people, processes, materials, equipment, and facilities)-to improve the efficiency and quality of health care delivery, as well as health care outcomes. The National Academies Press

Unopened Claims Letters

Unopened claims letters hidden at VA offices 03/04/09. A new report about Veterans Affairs Department employees squirreling away tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims is sparking fresh concerns that veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of money. Federal Times

VAOIG Review of Wichita VA

Combined Assessment Program Review of the Robert J. Dole VA Medical Center, Wichita, Kansas 03/03/09. The purpose of the review was to evaluate selected operations, focusing on patient care administration and quality management (QM). During the review, we provided fraud and integrity awareness training to 145 medical center employees. The review covered eight operational activities. The medical center complied with selected standards in the following two activities (1) staffing and (2) survey of healthcare experiences of patients. We identified the duty to report software program and root cause analysis teams as organizational strengths. We made recommendations for improvement in the following six activities: QM. Environment of care. Coordination of care. Emergency/urgent care operations. Medication management. Pharmacy operations. VAOIG

Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress

Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress Releases Latest Topics 03/03/09. The latest in the series of Courage to Care fact sheets targeted to support our nation’s military service members and their families are now available on the web. Suicide Facts for Primary Care Providers: Helping Service Members and Families Overcome Barriers to Care"; "Suicide Facts: What Military Families Should Know to Help Loved Ones Who May Be at Risk"; and, "Health Literacy: Addressing Communication Barriers to Foster Patient Self-Care and Family Care" have been added to the collection of educational resources available. Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) via Newswise