Winners named in Veterans Health Affairs IT competition

When doctors at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northport, N.Y., call up a patient's electronic medical record in the future, they will have an easy way to make sure they have the right record, because each file will have a large photo of the patient prominently displayed on the opening screen.

That's one of the 26 winning ideas in the Veterans Health Affairs' information technology competition that drew more than 6,500 entries from VHA employees. The submissions demonstrated the "tremendous creativity" of the VHA workforce, said Eric Shinseki, secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department.

VA announced it had chosen the winners of the competition in late May, and today officials spotlighted three of them at a media briefing, including Dr. Mark Graber, chief of medicine at the Northport VA hospital. It was his idea was to add a digital photo to each patient record.

Graber said the concept is simple, but it will provide clinicians at Northrop with a visual backstop when presented with a menu that could include the records of up to 50,000 patients. To reinforce the visual clue, he said every page of a patient's record will have a smaller photo digitally attached.

The images also will help humanize the medical process, he said, providing a reminder to clinicians that they are treating a person and not their chart.

Dr. Jason Barnard, associate chief information officer for the VHA region that serves the greater Washington area, won an innovation award for his suggestion to tap the Wi-Fi networks installed at VA hospitals nationwide to support voice paging systems, a move that will eliminate the need for a separate paging network.

A number of companies manufacture voice pagers that can operate over Wi-Fi networks that also adhere to federal security standards, Barnard said. The next stage is to select one or more that can support hospitals in the Washington area.

Decision support systems can provide clinicians with automated support, but adding these features to the VA's Computerized Patient Record System has been an awkward and difficult process due to a lack of standardization. Dr. Clayton Curtis, who works on the informatics staff at the Boston VA Medical Center, said he developed a way to use health industry standards to incorporate features such as risk reminders into the patient record system, including an alert that will tell a doctor to schedule a female patient for a mammogram.

Dr. Peter Levin, chief technology officer at VA, said the department has a $15 million fund to turn the ideas into reality. The winning ideas, however, first will be rolled out to the facilities that developed them.

VA officials declined to provide details on the other 23 winning ideas that were announced May 28. They are:

Reducing health care-associated infections using informatics

Computerized Patient Record System-based automated queries and reports

Robust search engine for VA forms

Enhanced case management and chronic disease care

Integration of behavioral health lab and CPRS for mental health primary care

E-discharge pilot program

CPRS enhancement for veteran-centered care

"Parking" outpatient prescriptions to prevent waste

Suicide hotline: Be a hero, save a hero

Touch-screen device support for triage

Tools for front-line veteran eligibility staffing

VA-wide core collection of knowledge-based information resources

Integrate VistA surgery package with CPRS

Illustrated medication instructions for veterans

Share verified insurance info via a master patient index

Online tracking of mail prescription delivery to veterans

Search function in CPRS

Accessible contact information for assigned care providers

Online radiology protocoling tool integrated within CPRS/VistA

Improved access to military personnel records

Brief resident supervision index

Emergency medical response team communication