Quality Transformation of the Veterans Healthcare System Essay

Quality Transformation of the Veterans Healthcare System - Essay Example In the 1990s the VHA had a series of problems that prompted a need for reform. The challenges were with substandard care for older veterans and many of the hospitals were run down and poorly managed. Many doctors lacked the experience to run the hospitals properly and patient needs were not being satisfied (Cannon, 2006). The problem was so great that Congress considered shutting down the hospitals and giving veterans a voucher to go to outside private hospitals (Waller, 2006, p. 1). A restructuring took place in the mid-1990s to focus on taking care of outpatients rather than in keeping them in lengthy hospital stays. Larger hospitals that were not effective were closed in favor of clinics that would concentrate on meeting the needs of the aging veterans. After this time many newspaper reported that the VHA was particularly good for a variety of conditions. The greatest part of the reform was to update their technology and create better systems for managed care. As an example, they created software that would track their patients so they would have access to them as needed instead of having to scramble to find patients information. These measures gave doctors the ability to improve patient care because their records were easily accessible on a laptop computer. The reason this is easy is because the VHA has a system wide database where they keep a total history of each veteran. Within this reform a barcode system was also adopted for prescriptions so that when f illing them a nurse can scan the barcode on the patient and then scan it on the prescription to make sure that there is a match. These changes prompted many veterans to leave private insurance and go back to the VHA which also created more problems for the VHA because the influx of patients created challenges financially that Congress did not provide for in the revamping (Waller, p. 2). In order to deal with the influx they had to limit the amount of people who could take