HJNO Nov/Dec 2019

Healthcare Journal of NEW ORLEANS I  NOV / DEC 2019 17 health care facility in the nation. Since we replaced our VA health care system post- Katrina, we boast a number of new innova- tions, including performing the first corneal collagen crosslinking procedure ever com- pleted at a VA medical center on a patient who transferred from the Manhattan VA for the procedure. We are the third largest academic pro- gram in the VA health care system, with a total of 1,803 trainees rotating at our facil- ity during the 2018–19 academic year. We had 48 different graduate medical education programs from LSUHSC and Tulane, and associated health trainees from 43 different affiliates. We expect this number to grow to over 2,200 next year, as we continue to expand our graduate medical education and nursing programs. Our relationships with LSU, Tulane, and other health care teach- ing institutions give us clinical capabilities that you won’t find at many other VAhospi- tals. We house an active research project in the former Dixie Brewery building on cam- pus. This past year, our research program oversaw a total of 66 studies involving bio- medical and clinical health service research projects. Next year, we expect nearly $3 mil- lion in research funding, to study everything from cancer to mental illness. Our health care system is designed to meet the needs of the veterans of south- east Louisiana. That’s reflected in several ways. One example is our use of telehealth. We recently expanded our tele-urgent care assessment service to 24/7. A veteran who may not want to drive in to the medical center or an urgent care facility when ill can now use a computer or smart phone to connect by video with an urgent care provider in our emergency room in New Orleans. That provider will have the abil- ity to asses, diagnose, and write a prescrip- tion, if needed, without the veteran having to leave the house. If you come to the medical center, you’ll see another way we’ve designed our ser- vices around the people who live here. Next to our rehabilitation building are four shotgun houses that are set up to help vet- erans with disabilities practice activities of daily life. For a veteran who now has to use a wheelchair to get around the home, we provide a place to learn how to safely do things like cooking or going from the first floor to the second. They can practice these things in a place that feels like a typical New Orleans home so they will have less diffi- culty doing them on their own. More than anything, the veterans medi- cal center in New Orleans is a community hospital. That comes out of building a new medical center that was tailored to the com- munity we serve. Editor  Please explain how Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System can work to operate efficiently within its budget, and also provide quality care. How is quality maintained and measured throughout the system? Rivera  Quality and budget are perhaps the most misunderstood aspects of the VA health care system. Study after study sug- gest that our quality and patient safety mea- sures are often the same or higher than in traditional systems of care. In fact, this trend is due to lower cost of care combined with care coordination, ease of access, and patient safety. We maintain quality of care by using standardized tools, such as Lean methodology, throughout the facility to design and evaluate processes that result in good patient outcomes. We foster a Just Culture, a culture of safety that encourages employees to speak up when systems are not working. By taking the time to build these systems and foster this culture early in our hospital’s development, we have devel- oped a foundation for continued quality of care as we build volume and complexity. We have a national office for quality mea- sures that has created products to help us track, trend, and analyze data in real-time, or near-real time. We keep track of all the