Dr Theresa Cullen: Yeah, VHA. It’s a really, an exciting time and actually we’re involved in the 3 former panelists and I’m working them regularly. And just so you know, if I wasn’t going to highlight interoperability, but I got to jump on what Craig and Gale just said. I think we’re seeing tremendous movement in the interoperability space, really driven by the private sector, I mean by the federal sector. I think the feds have really taken this on with the recognition at least for us as the Veterans’ Health Administration, that we need to ensure continuum of care from DOD into the VA system and as well as acknowledge our private health partners that are providing care.
I think the most important thing that comes from that, however, is really the patient experience of care. In our case, obviously it’s the veterans’ experience of care. And when we look at what health IT is bringing to the table, it’s really the ability for the patient, for the veteran to control their information, to be able to access their information, to be able to download their information. We’ve previously talked on the, about the blue button on the show.
JIm Flyzik: Sure.
Dr Theresa Cullen: But I think that those are really important successes that we’ve seen. The other things are really related, once again to be patient centric here, to patient safety. How does health IT improve the safety for the patient at the point of care and throughout the continuum of care? The VA has done lots of work in there with something that may seem mundane right now – the barcode medication administration. You know, the scanners you have when you scan your food? That was a tremendous innovation at that time, and we’re seeing ongoing advances with the extension of barcode technology into other venues at the time of delivery to really improve patient outcome.
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