Fellows Blog
Patient-centered innovation: The VA approach
Dave Chokshi
December 11, 2013
Chokshi, DA, Schectman, G, Agarwal, M. Healthcare 2013; 1(3–4):72–75.
Since its inception in 1945, the federal healthcare system for veterans, the Veterans Health Administration—part of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—has striven to address the needs of a discrete population: those who have served our country in the military. In this way, patient-centeredness has always been a cornerstone of VA's approach to serving veterans. As the system expanded, competencies in acute inpatient care, medical specialization, and high technology achieved primacy. In the 1990s, concerns about fragmented care and irregular quality led to a transformation grounded in high-quality ambulatory and primary care, implementation of an electronic health record (EHR), and a performance management system. Today's VA is attempting to meld this history of innovation and the foundation of high-quality primary care into a vision of patient-centeredness for the modern-day veteran.
The full text of this article is available from ScienceDirect.
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