Veterans Affairs News and Research

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Evolvent Technologies awarded contract to increase Veterans Affairs clinician access to DoD information

Evolvent Technologies, Inc. (Evolvent), a leading provider of healthcare information technology to the federal government, announced today that it was awarded a contract with the Department of Defense (DoD) Military Health Services for enhancements to the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange (BHIE) to further increase Veterans Affairs (VA) clinician access to DoD information on a shared patient population.

21 Aug 2009

Enterprise Technology Solutions and Health Net Federal Services to provide recovery audit services to VA HAC

Enterprise Technology Solutions (ETS) LLC, a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) and Health Net Federal Services LLC, the government operations division of Health Net, Inc., (NYSE:HNT) today announced they have been awarded a contract by the Department of Veterans Affairs Health Administration Center (VA HAC) to provide recovery audit services of VA payments made for non-VA hospital care to veterans. As the prime contractor for this agreement, ETS will provide program management, and Health Net Federal Services, the prime subcontractor, will provide technical and operational expertise.

20 Aug 2009

Veterans deserve better than the Department of Veterans Affairs current advance care planning tool

Paul Malley, President of the national non-profit organization Aging with Dignity, said the nation's 24 million veterans deserve better than the Department of Veterans Affairs current advance care planning tool, "Your Life, Your Choices."

19 Aug 2009

U.S. Food and Drug Administration launches new Center for Tobacco Products

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today launched its new Center for Tobacco Products in an historic effort to curb the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by those products each year.

19 Aug 2009

Researchers find connection between eye disease and arginase

Elevated levels of the enzyme arginase contribute to vascular eye damage and Medical College of Georgia researchers say therapies to normalize its levels could halt progression of potentially blinding diseases such as diabetic retinopathy.

19 Aug 2009

Prion found to be a biomarker for pancreatic cancer

Mad cow disease is caused by the accumulation of an abnormal protein, the prion, in the brain of an affected patient. Outside of the brain, very little is known about prions.

18 Aug 2009

Obama pledges reform won't change veterans' health care

During his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Ariz., on Monday, President Barack Obama "noted that his administration was committed to increased spending on VA health care," The Associated Press reports.

18 Aug 2009

Obesity leads to worse prostate cancer in both black and whites equally

A new look at a large database of prostate cancer patients shows that obesity plays no favorites when it comes to increasing the risk of recurrence after surgery: Being way overweight is equally bad for blacks and whites, say researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

13 Aug 2009

Stanford researchers want FDA to require drug makers to state how new medications compare with similar, existing treatments

The labeling information that comes with prescription drugs tells you what’s known about the medication, but researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine think it’s high time that the labeling tell you what isn’t known.

13 Aug 2009

Alcoholics display abnormal brain activity when processing facial expressions

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that individuals who have a long history of alcoholism, but who have been abstinent for at least a month up to many years, showed abnormal brain activity when looking at facial expressions of others.

12 Aug 2009

Socioeconomic status plays no role in brain's continued ability to function with age

New UCLA research suggests that for seniors age 70 and older, socioeconomic status does not play a major role in the brain's continued ability to function. However, seniors who have never been married and widowers seem to perform more poorly as they age.

7 Aug 2009

Congressman’s visit to The American Legion beneficial to veterans

During a recent visit to The American Legion headquarters here, U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., said that the maintenance of high quality health care for veterans is at the very top of his list of priorities. Within a week, Filner, who is chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has demonstrated his advocacy and response to Legion concerns by introducing legislation long championed by the Legion that would materially aid Medicare-eligible vets.

6 Aug 2009

Dartmouth wins $3 million for health IT research

Dartmouth has received a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation for research to develop secure and trustworthy computing systems for healthcare settings.

6 Aug 2009

Therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest is cost-effective

A brain-preserving cooling treatment called therapeutic hypothermia is a cost-effective way to improve outcomes after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, which claims the lives of more than 300,000 people each year in the United States and leaves thousands of others neurologically devastated.

6 Aug 2009

Cooling unconscious cardiac arrest survivors increases survival, cost effective

Cooling unconscious cardiac arrest survivors can increase survival and has a cost effectiveness comparable to other widely accepted treatments in modern health care, researchers report in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

4 Aug 2009

Regular yoga practice associated with mindful eating

Regular yoga practice is associated with mindful eating, and people who eat mindfully are less likely to be obese, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

3 Aug 2009

Altering the course of schizophrenia with new research

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is launching a large-scale research project to explore whether using early and aggressive treatment, individually targeted and integrating a variety of different therapeutic approaches, will reduce the symptoms and prevent the gradual deterioration of functioning that is characteristic of chronic schizophrenia.

21 Jul 2009