VA Tech: Info may have saved lives
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Better information by officials could have saved lives in a shooting spree on campus at Virginia Tech that left 33 people dead, a high-profile independent panel investigating the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history says.
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Information classified as "need to know" by the military is available to anyone with an internet connection, thanks to mistakes and inattentiveness by the people running agency servers.
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A different perspective on the war in Iraq: behind the scenes at a hospital.
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Giving rescue workers training to administer drugs and insert a tube down the throat of someone with life-threatening breathing problems can save lives, Canadian researchers reported on Wednesday.
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By Ana Ribeiro, The Roanoke Times, Va.  Feb. 24--Early Thursday afternoon, Rob Shields got a phone call at work that anybody would dread.   It was the Roanoke Fire-EMS Department.   But there was no fire.
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By Jon W. Glass, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.  Dec. 18--NEWPORT NEWS -- The search for a weapon that could knock down an incoming cruise missile drew the Navy. A possible cure for adult acne attracted a Harvard dermatologist.
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The high survival rate among the injured at the battle of Waterloo could help inform modern medicine.
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Report on US college massacre says officials might have saved lives if they had acted sooner.
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Â· Iraq and Afghanistan casualties to get HIV tests  Â· Poor record keeping at US field hospitals blamed
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Armed with miniaturized medical devices, surgeons bring advanced care to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan just moments after they're hurt. By Randy Dotinga.
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Sometimes, it is only when the patient is halfway out the door that important information spills out.
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Substandard care at a southern Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital may have contributed to 19 deaths over the past two years
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The Department of Veterans Affairs used prewar data to estimate the cost of caring for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, a mistake that contributed to a $3 billion budget shortfall since 2005, government investigators say.
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The U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs still aren&#39;t able to share complete electronic health records of military members and veterans despite working on a project for nine years, employees of the two agencies told a congressional committee Wednesday.While the two agencies have begun to share some text records, including discharge summaries and emergency-room reports, it won&#39;t be until 2008 before they can share vital signs of patients, laboratory data, and family histories, said Dr. Gerald Cross, principal deputy undersecretary of health in the VA&#39;s Veterans Health Administration.Officials from both agencies told the U.S. House of Representatives Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations they&#39;re making good progress, but issues remain. &quot;The work to make data computable between two different health-care systems is very complex and requires complete standardization of data,&quot; Cross said.And the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has yet to see a comprehensive plan from the two agencies to share e-health records, added Valerie Melvin, director of human capital and management information systems issues for the GAO. The GAO has issued multiple reports since 2001 calling for VA and DOD to improve their health records sharing, she noted.The agencies have made progress on short-term projects to share data between some health-care centers, she said.&quot;These exchanges are limited, as significant work still remains to achieve the long-term goal of a comprehensive electronic medical record,&quot; Melvin said. It&#39;s unclear how a number of ad hoc projects will fit into an e-health record program, she said.Lawmakers stressed the importance of getting a record-sharing program in place as wounded military members come back from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and will get medical service from both agencies. &quot;This is a critically important issue,&quot; said Rep. Harry Mitchell, an Arizona Democrat and subcommittee chairman. &quot;Thousands of our servicemen and women require and will continue to require significant medical care.&quot;While lawmakers called for the agencies to move faster, the GAO noted some progress. The agencies have developed repositories for health data and are starting to populate them with data, a GAO report said. Seven DOD and VA sites are using an interface to the data repositories, the report said.&quot;Much work&quot; remains before the e-health records sharing system is fully operational, the report said.The DOD and VA effort has been plagued by several setbacks in the past nine years. An interface for a data repository was delayed for more than a year at one point, and in July 2002, the agencies split the project into two initiatives after multiple delays.In July, after nine years of work, the two agencies awarded a contract for a consultant to conduct a feasibility study for a common inpatient health record system.Together, the two agencies have spent more than $1.8 billion on health records initiatives since 1998, according to the GAO.But officials from both agencies expressed optimism. Asked if they could share all data within a year, three officials from the DOD and one from the VA said they expect that to happen.&quot;We are all working toward the same end -- to provide the highest-quality care to our nation&#39;s heroes, past and present,&quot; said Dr. Stephen Jones, the DOD&#39;s principal deputy assistant secretary for health affairs.
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The Department of Veterans Affairs is once again chasing a missing hard drive, this one containing the records of 48,000 military veterans. Approxiately 20,000 of those records were not encrypted according to agency spokespersons.
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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. -- Fake blood spewed, smoke billowed, strobe lights flashed, and two high-tech dummies with limbs blown off lay on the ground.
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Virginia Tech officials might have saved lives if they had acted sooner after the first shootings, a report says.