Va:ie

On this episode of the Veteran’s Health Administration’s Innovation Ecosystem (VHA:IE) podcast, we focus on “hackathons”, which are events where students, engineers, and entrepreneurs get together to engage in programming, innovation, and an engineering challenges. This past year, the VA teamed up with GeorgeHacks to help veterans with some human-centered design challenges. Suzy Shirley, the Entrepreneur in Residence at the VHA Innovation Ecosystem, is this episode’s first guest. Suzy explains why hackathons are an unexplored mine full of potential and innovation. She also explains how you can take an everyday problem and give it to hundreds of students, entrepreneurs, engineers, and free-thinkers in order to solve the issue. The 2019 GeorgeHacks event brought people together and encouraged them to think outside the box and come together to solve a problem. Even with the enormous expertise within the VA system, they’re bound by the issues that limits VA healthcare. One of the ways they have overcome some o

Welcome to the VHA Innovation Ecosystem podcast! Today’s episode focuses on women Veterans, who comprise nearly 15% of all active duty military and 18% of all National Guard and Reserves. There are about 2.2 million women Veterans who make up nearly 7% of all VA health care users. Women are the fastest growing group within the Veteran population, and VA expects the number of women Veterans using VA care to increase dramatically as more women serve in the armed services. During this episode, we offer three segments that introduce programs that help women Veterans take charge of their reproductive rights, creatively tell their service stories, and connect as a community. Our first segment is with Dr. Lori Gawron at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System. Dr. Gawron’s practice trains primary care providers in the One Key Question algorithm, which starts with a simple question: “Would you like to become pregnant in the next year?” Patient responses facilitate further conversation, and this assessment provides

Welcome to VHA Innovation Ecosystem podcast! On this episode, we cover advanced care planning and programs that help Veterans have difficult conversations with their care providers and families. Dr. Kimberly Garner and Laura Taylor speak to Advanced Care Planning via Group Visits (ACP-GV). ACP-GV uses interactive, patient-centered group sessions led by health care professionals to engage Veterans in thinking about and planning for future medical decisions. Participation in the group discussions often leads to better management of chronic disease and increased access to primary care, along with enhanced communication, decision-making, and satisfaction. The second practice featured in today’s episode is the Life Sustaining Treatment Veteran Education Video. This practice aims to create a video explaining life-sustaining treatments for Veterans who are visual learners to optimize their decision-making. The video is under development by Elizabeth Williams, an Innovation Specialist and a Clinical Nurse Leader a

Today’s episode of the VHA Innovation Ecosystem podcast will focus on the recent VHE Aungrial talks that took place on August 29th and 30th of 2018. Over 70 VA employees attended this event and shared their struggles and successes within their respective VA programs. 13 of these professionals gave presentations about their work. Among the presenters was Dr. Ellina Seckel, Associate Chief, Ambulatory and Specialty Care - Pharmacy Service at William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison Wisconsin. Dr. Seckel is in charge of implementing the Increasing Access to Primary Care Through Clinical Pharmacy Specialists program. The doctor will explain why the facility felt the need to create a new pharmaceutical position for their primary care teams and the overwhelmingly positive effects it has done for both physician and patient satisfaction. During this special mini-episode you will learn about: What makes a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist different from a traditional pharmacist? How hiring a pharmacist

The fifth episode of the VHA Innovation Ecosystem podcast, VHA:IE, focuses on how VA is helping Veterans reflect on and share their stories with their health providers, loved ones, and the community at large. On this episode, you will hear from the team behind a program that personalizes the healthcare experience by including a Veteran’s life story in their medical file, along with a project that aims to address how Veterans may confront death. You’ll also hear from a non-profit dance group that is helping restore Veterans' physical, mental, and emotional strength through workshops and public performances. The first program, My Life, My Story, is building a network of employees and volunteers who sit down with Veterans and then craft written life stories for inclusion in Veterans’ medical records. This allows Veterans to feel seen and heard and enables doctors to better understand the lives of those they care for. The program originated at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, Wisco