As the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) engages in a whole-of-agency approach to curb veteran suicide rates that have hovered near or above 6,000 per year for the past two decades, a new government watchdog report finds that technology is proving its value in that effort.
According to a September 14 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) began using a predictive model that, since 2017, has allowed the agency to identify veterans who are potentially at an increased risk of suicide and provide them enhanced medical care…
The VA has established veteran suicide prevention as its highest clinical priority, because veterans suffer a disproportionately higher rate of suicide compared to non-veterans. The GAO found that the REACH VET model helped in reducing the number of documented suicide attempts, and identified veterans not flagged by other screening programs… Read the full article here.
