SMASH.
Don't fix those deadly veterans hospitals. Abolish them. What was a nice former beauty queen doing in a place like this? A room where shell-shocked, quadriplegic patients languished unfed for three days, swimming in feces and tied to their beds? Where uncertified doctors accidentally killed some vets...

Electronic health records put VA in command.
Over the last decade, health care within the Department of Veterans Affairs has transformed itself from a near failure to a national model for quality improvement, leaving many to ask how they could learn from those lessons. The answer may lie in part with the department's electronic...

Tough talk for depressed husbands.
Attention, married men suffering from major depression: Positive comments directed at your wife may sometimes be hazardous to your emotional health. That, at least, is the implication of a preliminary study of couples with either a depressed husband or wife. When depressed husbands discussed marital...

Guidelines, feedback can improve diabetes care. (Veterans Administration Effort).
NEW YORK -- Systematic use of evidence-based guidelines, performance measures, and clinical feedback can substantially improve the quality of diabetes care, Dr. Clark T. Sawin said at a conference sponsored by the American Diabetes Association. Such an approach has yielded significant gains in recent years within the...

Nefazodone's New Uses May Benefit Adolescents.
CHICAGO -- The antidepressant nefazodone has novel properties--and some intriguing potential applications--that may be advantageous in adolescents as well as adults, speakers said at the annual meeting of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry. "Nefazodone is gaining currency," commented Dr. Carrie Sylvester, who is director of education...

Chiropractors as PCPs? (Practice Trends - Policy Practice).
Medical groups are speaking out against legislation that would allow patients to choose a chiropractor as their primary care provider in veterans' hospitals. More than one dozen medical groups recently sent a letter opposing such a provision in H.R. 2792, the "Disabled Veterans Service Dog and Health Care Improvement...

Chiropractors as PCPs? (Policy & Practice).
Medical groups are speaking out against legislation that would let patients choose a chiropractor as their primary care provider in veterans' hospitals. More than a dozen medical groups sent a letter opposing such a provision in H.R. 2792, the Disabled Veterans Service Dog and Health Care Improvement Act of...

ModSpace's MedBuild Opens New VA Medical Care Facility in Louisiana.
HEALTH AND BEAUTY CLOSE-UP-8 August 2008-ModSpace's MedBuild Opens New VA Medical Care Facility in Louisiana(C)2008 - CloseUpMedia - newsdesk@closeupmedia.com MedBuild, the specialized healthcare division of Modular Space (ModSpace), recently joined government officials and local dignitaries in Reserve, Louisiana to celebrate the official grand opening of the new...

Uninsured U.S. vets number 2 million.
Almost 2 million U.S. veterans were living without health insurance in 2004, according to a December AJPH study. The percentage of working-age veterans without health insurance climbed to more than 12 percent in 2004. From 2000 to 2004, the rolls of uninsured working-age veterans rose by almost...

VA moves forward with patient access to EMRs: Department of Veterans Affairs is ramping up a pilot project intended to go national this spring.
Physicians at the Department of Veterans Affairs have been using an electronic medical record for about 20 years, so officials there are getting ready to take the next step--online patient access to their medical records. Next May, the VA plans to provide patients with online access to...