Health IT, Hospitals, Payers, Policy

You know it’s bad if Jon Stewart spends 7 minutes criticizing the VA’s HIT system

I'll say spring break was the reason I missed this when it first aired last month. When you're in a cabin with a bunch of kids and some of them are sleeping in the only room with a TV in it, The Daily Show is not on the viewing schedule.

I’ll say spring break was the reason I missed this when it first aired last month. When you’re in a cabin with a bunch of kids and some of them are sleeping in the only room with a TV in it, The Daily Show is not on the viewing schedule.

I found this clip in a post with good news about at least one aspect of government IT. If you haven’t seen it either, take a few minutes to watch it.

This dead-on analysis by Jon Stewart is a stinging critique of the awful situation that the VA is in. He starts by calling out President Obama for allowing the problem to get 2,000% worse since he took office. The number of veterans waiting more than a year for benefits has increased from 11,000 in 2009 to 245,000 in 2012.
The clip is full of depressing figures:

  • 900,000 veterans are waiting for disability claims to be processed
  • The average wait is 273 days.
  • 97% of disability claims are on paper.
  • The VA has had a 40% increase in its budget.
  • The VA has spent $1 billion over four years to improve the system.

His closing thought said it all:

If we’re smart and technically savvy enough to create to create flying unmanned robots with 1.8 gigapixel cameras that can spot enemy acne from 10 miles away, and national security data mining programs than can store and process more than 10,000 times as much data as is contained in the entire Internet, we should be able to cook up a network spreadsheet program that knows which leg a returning solider has lost without him having to fill out 10 forms and come in for a person to person leg assessment.

Veronica Combs

Veronica is an independent journalist and communications strategist. For more than 10 years, she has covered health and healthcare with a focus on innovation and patient engagement. Most recently she managed strategic partnerships and communications for AIR Louisville, a digital health project focused on asthma. The team recruited 7 employer partners, enrolled 1,100 participants and collected more than 250,000 data points about rescue inhaler use. Veronica has worked for startups for almost 20 years doing everything from launching blogs, newsletters and patient communities to recruiting speakers, moderating panel conversations and developing new products. You can reach her on Twitter @vmcombs.

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