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VA tests faster methods for medical records review

The Veterans Affairs Department will begin using a private contractor to help collect veterans' medical records from their health care providers in an attempt to streamline the claims process.

Under the pilot program, which the department announced Monday, the contractor will get the records, scan them and securely transmit them to the VA. The department expects the process to cut down wait times on claims by a month, to as little as seven to 10 days.

"Innovations that will speed, simplify or improve our services to veterans are receiving rigorous tests at VA," said Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. "We are committed to harnessing the best technology and the brightest minds in the government and private sector to ensure veterans receive the benefits they have earned."

The test program will involve 60,000 record requests in Phoenix; New York City; St. Louis; Portland, Ore.; Chicago; Anchorage, Alaska; Jackson, Miss.; and Indianapolis.

New leader of traumatic brain injury center brings combat experience to job

Navy Capt. Paul Hammer, who takes over as director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury in January 2011, brings a wealth of experience to his new job, including a combat tour with Bravo Surgical Company with the Marines in 2004 during the battle for Fallujah.

Hammer, currently director of the Naval Center for Combat and Operational Stress Control at the San Diego Naval Medical Center, talked via e-mail recently to Nextgov about his early service as an enlisted Marine, his decision to go to medical school after four years with the Marines, his combat experience from two Iraq tours and his general plans for his new post.

Q: Why did you enlist in the Marine Corps?

A: I enlisted out of high school because I really didn't feel ready to go to college. I was the oldest of eight kids and felt some responsibility about not wasting my parent's money going to college to "find myself." My decision to join the Marine Corps was one of the best decisions of my life.

My [military occupational specialty] was 2851, aviation radio repairman. I went to boot camp at Parris Island, then radio ...

Agencies turn to technology for help reducing payment errors

In the past few years, 14,000 felons, both fugitive and jailed, raked in $230 million in federal benefits they were not entitled to receive. Twenty thousand dead Americans earned $180 million. In 2009 alone, the federal government made $110 billion in improper payments--that's nearly double the amount taxpayers will end up shelling out for the massive financial bailout, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

The Office of Management and Budget breaks down the numbers like this: One-third of improper payments can be explained by poor documentation that makes it impossible to verify whether they were accurate, and another third result from failure to confirm individuals are eligible to receive the payments in the first place. The rest boil down to simple program errors, or people duping the system.

"Just as important as the choice of what strategies to pursue is how we pursue them," Jeffrey Zients, federal chief performance officer and now OMB interim director, said in a memo that outlined a series of goals for improving IT performance. "Where efforts are off-track and a team is not making the necessary midcourse corrections, we will work with them to get efforts back on track ...

Defense taps Navy psychiatrist to head traumatic brain injury center

The Defense Department has appointed a Navy psychiatrist, Capt. Paul Hammer, as director of its Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury.

Hammer, who takes over in January 2011, replaces Army Col. Robert Saum, a psychologist with a doctorate in cognitive studies. Defense removed Saum as interim director of the centers in September following a personnel complaint and subsequent investigation. Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, director of force health protection and readiness programs in the Military Health System, temporarily replaced Saum.

Defense established the centers to research and treat the signature wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries -- but the organization has had a troubled history since its creation in November 2007. Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., said at a hearing of the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee in April that despite a lavish budget, the centers, "while having achieved some notable small-scale successes, has not inspired great confidence, or enthusiasm thus far."

Saum took over as head of the centers in June after Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, who served as director since the organization opened, abruptly departed with no public announcement. She now works in an unspecified capacity for Lt. Gen ...

VA seeks vendors for wireless networks

The Veterans Affairs Department on Monday asked industry for ideas about how to provide wireless Internet access to patients and visitors at its 153 medical centers. The request for information is an effort to find qualified vendors that can offer the service.

VA emphasized the wireless network must operate independently from other wireless networks installed in the hospitals to support clinicians. The department has installed WiFi networks in all its hospitals to support, among other things, a system called bar code medication administration to ensure that patients receive the right prescription in the correct dosage at the appropriate time.

Scripps Health, which operates six hospitals in the San Diego area, was the first health care organization to offer wireless Internet access to patients in 2003. Since then, the number of hospitals that provide patient WiFi access has grown to 740 worldwide, according to Kristin Mitchell, a spokeswoman for JiWire, a San Francisco-based company that maintains a global database of WiFi hot spots.

Mitchell said 348 hospitals in the United States provide patients with wireless Internet access. Hospitals in Washington that offer the service include >Georgetown University Hospital, The George Washington University Hospital and the Washington Medical Center.

The Military Health ...

Lieberman unveils bill to stabilize funding for e-rule-making

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., on Thursday announced a bipartisan bill that for the first time would require stable funding for technology aimed at letting the general public in on the arcane process of shaping federal regulations -- e-rule-making. Rules are what the executive branch uses to put Congress' words into action by, for example, prohibiting health insurance companies from denying coverage to children because of a pre-existing condition.

Most people might not know or care about proposed rules, or their right to oppose such draft regulations through open comment periods. The 2002 E-Government Act, which Lieberman wrote, attempted to change that by mandating that agencies post rules on a searchable website, Regulations.gov. But the site is handicapped by underlying structural problems that Lieberman's new bill could fix, open government advocates said on Thursday.

"Regulations.gov has made some very useful incremental improvements in the last couple of years, but making the move to a second-generation rule-making 2.0 system means fundamental change," said Cynthia Farina, a Cornell University law professor who wrote a 2008 American Bar Association committee report that laid the groundwork for this week's legislation, the 2010 E-Rule-making Act (S. 3961). "And that kind of change ...

VA loses and recovers unencrypted thumb drive

A Veterans Affairs Department claims examiner used a personal unencrypted thumb drive to store records on veterans that included Social Security numbers and then lost the drive. In another instance, a VA employee printed out records containing personal information on veterans and took them home. The two incidents, described by VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker Wednesday in a monthly briefing on data breaches reported to Congress, indicate department employees still do not follow policies and procedures to safeguard information.

Baker said an employee at the regional Veterans Benefits Administration claims office in Nashville, Tenn., plugged an unencrypted thumb drive into his VA computer to store information as he worked. The data included files on 186 veterans and contained a range of sensitive personal information, including names, medical and financial records, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers. VA policies prohibit the use of personal and unencrypted thumb drives on its computers.

A security guard found the drive somewhere in the office, took it home and asked his wife -- who held a Top Secret security clearance from her job -- to look at the drive. She recognized it contained sensitive information and told her husband to return it the next ...

Privacy advocates want Hill probe of airport scanners

Privacy and civil-liberties advocates Tuesday called for controversial passenger-screening procedures at the nation's airports to be suspended and for Congress to investigate whether the Homeland Security Department has misled the public about the safety of whole-body scanning machines.

The advocates, including consumer activist Ralph Nader, want the use of whole-body imaging machines to be suspended at least until the department conducts a rule-making process under which it discloses detailed information about the safety of the machines and allows for public comment.

Nader, speaking on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, said that opposition to the machines' use is growing from many organizations, including travel groups and pilots' unions.

"With the travel industry, the airline industry, the airline pilots, the unions, and the traveling public increasingly opposed to this, TSA's position simply cannot stand. They're going to have to suspend the program," Nader said. "Increasingly the burden will be on the U.S. Congress."

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, noted that Congress has intervened before to stop intelligence or security programs in the face of public opposition, such as the so-called Total Information Awareness program and Secure Flight.

Indeed, TIA funding was canceled ...

Officials defend airport screening but say changes are coming

Homeland Security officials Monday defended airport screening procedures amid a backlash of complaints that they are too invasive, but officials said that changes to some tactics will be made soon.

"We are doing what we need to do to protect the traveling public," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said during a news conference at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. "Adjustments will be made where they need to be made."

Napolitano said that airline passengers have a role to play in aviation security by cooperating with screening procedures at the nation's airports. She was joined at the news conference by John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration.

"We know the threats are real," Pistole said, noting that he worked at the FBI for more than 25 years. "We know that everybody that gets on an airline wants to be ensured with high confidence that everybody else on that flight has been screened properly."

But with the holiday season fast approaching, some passenger-rights groups and pilots are protesting what they say are invasive procedures, such as physical pat downs, in which airport screeners rub their hands along the groin area. The screeners who perform the procedure are of the same ...

TSA works on alternative airport screening process for pilots

The Transportation Security Administration is working to create an alternative screening process for pilots, the agency's chief said this morning, amid mounting protests by airline pilots over new airport scanners criticized as invasive and hazardous to health due to radiation exposure.

"Obviously, they are a trusted group in so many different ways, and so it makes sense to do some type of different type of screening which we will explore and we will have a way forward in the near future," TSA Administrator John Pistole said on CNN's American Morning.

Pistole said his agency has been talking with pilot groups about a new screening process but declined when pressed to say what it might entail. "I don't want to broadcast anything prematurely," he said, "but I think there are options that we are looking at that make sense."

Controversy over the full-body scanners, which use radiation to produce a graphic image of those screened, has escalated in recent days. Last week, unions that represent pilots for American Airlines and U.S. Airways urged their members to avoid the scanners despite assertions by TSA and the Food and Drug Administration that the potential health risk of exposure was ...