HEALTH INFORMATICS IN VA OREGON.

HOST: An IMPORTANT PART of VA's commitment to provide the best care

anywhere encompasses developing faster and better ways to retrieve records
and manage data. This is evident in what's called health informatics which
works by applying digital technology in research,
teaching, patient care, and the delivery of services to support high-quality
healthcare.
The V-A Medical Center in Portland, Oregon has become one of the nation's
premier facilities for HEALTH INFORMATICS .To learn more about what V-A is
doing in this crucial area, we paid them a visit.
NURSE: "Do you have any ALLERGIES?"
PATIENT: "Not that I know of.”
NARRATOR: A common challenge for clinicians is determining precisely which
medications a patient may be taking.
VICTORIA CHURCH: "The difficulty is most PATIENTS, especially veterans,
are on at least 10 medicines and they don't know them by the fancy name; they
know them by the SHAPE of the pill or the color of the pill and what it's used
for." NARRATOR: This could create potential PROBLEMS in a critical care
situation when precise information may be needed on very short notice.
CHURCH: "So we develop SOFTWARE that pulls in that picture off of the I-D-N
number for that pill, so the patient actually gets the pill displayed so they can
know it's the pink round pill that is their chlorothiazide, and then they can tell us
if they’re taking it or taking it differently."
NARRATOR: This is just one example of how VA is employing enhanced
"informatics" to integrate patient information--which streamlines the PROCESS
of proving care that's swift, safe, and effective.
COLLEEN COLLEY: "Informatics, for us, has, um, made the process of our jobs
much easier."
NARRATOR: Colleen Colley is a clinical pharmacist at the VA Medical Center in
Portland, Oregon: She says informatics has transformed the way she performs
her job.
COLLEY: "Before, we had these paper shadow charts that were very unwieldy,
prone to error, not always available, easy-to-lose data, and we began by using
just an ELECTRONIC progress note”
COLLEY: "It allows us to manage the lab data, to document our therapy plans
with the patients, to order future labs and schedule future visits, and to
COMMUNICATE with not only other health care providers, but the patients as
well, and provide them education, so it's, it's a complete package that allows us
to, um, manage a number of complex, yet repetitive tasks, from patient to
patient, efficiently."
NARRATOR: Another example of informatics in action is what's called the
"Automated Patient History Intake Device. It's as fast and simple to use as the
ticket kiosk at the airport.
CHURCH: "It checks you into your , makes sure that your insurance information
and your demographics are correct. And then it runs you through medication
reconciliation."
NARRATOR: Automated medication APPOINMENT is one of the most
important aspects of the entire Informatics project.
CHURCH: "There’s nothing that is more of an impact for PATIENT´S safety
than looking at medication reconciliation and the kind of system that we've
developed here."
CHURCH: The reason that's important is medication errors can amount to
severe INJURY and harm. So our goal is to improve the accuracy, to improve
then the safety for the veteran of all of us being assured at every visit."
PATIENT: "Hello." NURSE: "How are you doing today?"
PATIENT: "Good."
NARRATOR: Informatics helps Diabetes Educator Judy McEwen share
information with patients who may move from one facility to another.
JUDY MCEWEN: "I have several patients that go to Arizona and come back,
and we can see if they needed to have any care there. We can also be able to
have the doctors know what their allergies are. And I think the patients like it,
too. When they go to different places, they know what MEDICATIONS they
have; they know that they can look that up."
NARRATOR: Helping patients take charge of their own care by having easy
ACCESS to their case histories is yet another benefit of the informatics project.
CHURCH: "And as many of our younger veterans are coming in, they want to
have that information themselves, they want to be in charge of that, and there’s
nothing more that they could do than to make sure that they know the
medicines they’re on."
HOST: V-A's pioneering development of health informatics technology is a
priority for V-A—not just at the Portland V-A Medical Center, but at V-A facilities
throughout the nation.

Now, let´s work on this:

How would you translate these noun phrases?
Patient care:
Diabetes Educator
Insuarence information

Let´s translate this part of the text:

"It allows us to manage the lab data, to document our therapy plans with the
patients, to order future labs and schedule future visits, and to communicate
with not only other health care providers, but the patients as well, and provide
them education, so it's, it's a complete package that allows us to, um, manage a
number of complex, yet repetitive tasks, from patient to patient, efficiently."

Let´s discuss these questions:

What are the benefits of Health Informatics?

Do you know if our War Veterans are engaged in a programme like this?