“VA’s Veterans Health Administration (VHA) leaders have identified 10 “gold status” practices following a “Shark Tank”-style competition held last summer. These practices address key areas in which VHA can improve its health care for Veterans.”
“The 10 winning ideas were selected from among 19 finalists and their final pitches were viewed by more than 160 people. Champions for each of the 10 practices completed a six-month facilitated replication at one or more VA facilities adapting and implementing their programs, leading to gold status practices being replicated at over 40 sites.”
“The following are the winning practices:
A Best Practice
The Collaborative Consult Scheduling Model
The lack of timely scheduling of consults and inconsistency in consult management often results in serious delays in a patient’s care. The new model facilitates a partnership between services to create a dedicated team of advanced medical support assistants to focus on consult scheduling that starts every day with a morning huddle every day. This allows the team to address several consults for a single Veteran. Implementing facilities include West Texas VA Health Care System (Big Spring, Texas), and the William Jennings Bryan Dorn VA Medical Center (Columbia, South Carolina)
VistA Automation for Prosthetics
Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Service’s workload outpaces VHA growth every year. An analysis of eight sites over the past five years identified a 40 percent increase in administrative workload, but only a 9 percent increase in staff…” Read the full blog post here.
Source: New best practices are being implemented across VA following “Shark Tank” competition – By Dr. Ryan Vega, February 8, 2018. Vantage Point.
