“The Department of Veterans Affairs has prepared an agency-wide plan to reorganize the Veterans Health Administration to best care for COVID-19 patients and contain the spread of the new virus.”
“’The primary goal of the operations plan is to protect veterans and staff from acquiring COVID-19 infection by leveraging technology, communications as well as using dedicated staff and space to care for COVID-19 patients,’ Veterans Health Administration Executive in Charge Richard Stone wrote in the plan. ‘As the nation’s largest health care network, our transparency is foundational to provide the American health care delivery system the opportunity to leverage and contribute to how the medical community collaborates when faced with the significant challenges associated with global pandemic.’”
“The note touches on VA’s ‘fourth mission’ to provide care to civilians in the event of hospital overflows during a time of crisis…”
“In abiding by its priorities, VHA is currently undergoing emergency reorganization to dedicate resources and human capital to care for COVID-19 patients while instating special precautions to ensure disease transmission is minimized both within and outside the VA.”
“The VA has outlined these preparations to be implemented along four distinct phases, spanning a preparatory phase of contingency planning and training, an immediate response period, a subsequent mobilization toward preparing alternate sites of care, and a final phase of recuperation and public assistance as the epidemic begins to wane…”
“One of the most consistent features of the plan is a rigorous demand for collection and dissemination of health information across the agency, both to direct its current actions as well as inform subsequent activity in the case of future epidemics. This statistical collection, tallied at the local level while being aggregated at the top for insights and analysis, will be centered on noting demands at specific hospitals for bed space and medical equipment. Data outlining deficiencies and gaps in the medical supply chain will be used to correct against these as the epidemic persists, as well as to ensure they are never repeated during future outbreaks…”
“As a broader solution, the VA will need to develop accompanying IT resources to meet these informational demands and ensure statistical data is both aggregated and communicated thoroughly. With the agency moving to build out and develop a modernized, sophisticated health IT infrastructure, it is clear a serious component of this will now involve capacities for analyzing and preempting the most effective response to novel coronavirus…” Read the full article here.
Source: VA Outlines Reorg, Data Reporting in COVID-19 Response Plan – By Adam Patterson, March 30, 2020. GovernmentCIO.
