Veterans Health Administration

And I'm probably more inclined to point out how this is happening even in places where you wouldn't expect it.

From a patient perspective, the Veterans Health Administration has not historically been, for all of its good, has not been historically known as a terribly whole health patient-oriented body.

But Ben Kligler and a number of team members have built out a whole health model that has changed that perception radically.

And from a patient perspective, it means veterans with chronic pain, often PTSD, coming into a clinic that feels very disorienting, need what Ben and team provided.

It wasn't unique.

Others, such as Kaiser Permanente and the Veterans Health Administration in the US, as well as various local systems in Europe, have all had varying degrees of success in this area, but Canterbury has stood out.

What happened there is regarded as radical, and the earthquake appeared to vindicate the changes that had been made, as shared electronic records, collaborative working, and managing patients with complex conditions in the community all came to the fore.

The Canterbury model boasted 30% fewer acute medical admissions compared to national averages across New Zealand, and a 7% reduction in acute medical bed days, as well as fewer old people needing residential care.

Tested blind against clinicians on simulated visits, the scribe's notes fell short.

Researchers at the Veterans Health Administration had eleven AI scribes and eighteen clinicians write notes from recordings of primary care visits acted out by standardized patients, and raters who did not know who wrote each note scored them on a standard measure of quality.

In every case, human notes scored higher, in some cases dramatically so, the American College of Physicians said in announcing the study.

The clinicians did not write under the pressures of a real clinic, which may have flattered them.

I had several resources to go to.

Um, and so, you know, I got a, I got on the phone with a gentleman that I know from the Veterans Health Administration, um, smartest man I've ever met in my entire life, and I was like, "Okay, this is what I'm doing, and this is what I want to happen in my book.

Like, can you give me some buzzwords," right? "Can you make me...

Can you ma- help me make this sound like it a- could actually happen?" And the first thing he said to me was, "Christy, this isn't science fiction." He said, "There are countries that are experimenting with this technology."

There's been a lot of, you know, bad accounting in the VA.

Uh, I would say in the last five years, six years, there's been, you know, folks going to Congress saying, "Hey, our, uh, VHA, um, budget is X amount of millions of dollars short." Then they're given X amount of dollars plus, and then they're like, "Oh, wait, we have too much now." Uh, so there, there could be just a, some discrepancies in accounting.

But I honestly don't really know the, the true story in this, uh, quote, unquote, "holiday," uh, where it came from, why they're doing it, or if this is just like an, uh, a move from the administration to actually help veterans.

A cynical person, not me, but a cynical person-

So I spent seven years, uh, in the federal healthcare space for the US, um, so specifically for veterans.

Uh, so I worked in the Veterans Health Administration.

Uh, my background is in social work and in, uh, healthcare administration, so I've done pediatrics and then shifted into the veteran space.

Um, I loved it.

Navigating the Veteran Benefits Administration, the VBA, can be challenging, especially because it's not something that veterans typically go to the VA for.

Most veterans who engage with the VA do so through the Veterans Health Administration, VHA.

What a lot of people don't realize is that the VBA and VHA are two totally separate departments within the same federal agency, like the Department of the Army and the Department of the Navy.

And like the military branches, while individuals within the different departments may interact, the departments themselves may not always cooperate in the most seamless manner.

In twenty twenty-five, three hundred forty-four at-risk veterans were connected to life-saving emergency mental health care through these grants, and VA expects this number to rise in twenty twenty-six.

Fox grantees also connected two thousand six hundred forty-seven veterans who had not previously used VHA services to VA care and resources, nearly one thousand more than in twenty twenty-four.

Sixty-one percent of the veterans who die by suicide were not in VHA care at any point in the two years prior to their death.

That's why VA has taken steps to enroll new veterans at Virginia so far in twenty twenty-six.

VA has enrolled more than two hundred and seventy thousand veterans into VA care.

St. Michael's Eye and Laser Institute, a Florida ophthalmology practice, and the ophthalmologist and owner of St. Michael's Eye and Laser Institute have agreed to pay $350,000 to resolve allegations that they caused the submission of false claims to Medicare in violation of the False Claims Act.

The United States alleges that from September 2015 through December 2020, St. Michael's Eye and Laser Institute and its ophthalmologist caused the submission of false claims for transcranial Doppler, or TCD, tests to Medicare and the Veterans Health Administration, the VA.

A TCD test is a non-invasive diagnostic test that can be used to estimate the blood flow through certain blood vessels in the brain by bouncing high-frequency sound waves off of blood cells.

As part of this settlement agreement, St. Michael's and the doctor admitted to and accepted responsibility for facts underlying the settlement agreement.