Archives for 2012

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EDITORIAL

Do you remember?

Do you remember what “the dark past has taught us?”  Do you remember the stony road we traveled as a people and the “bitter chast’ning rod” felt by our forebearers?  Do you remember that the same forebearers shed tears that watered the way over which we have come?

“In days to come, when your children ask you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to them, ‘With a mighty hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”  (Exodus 13:14)

Lesli Koppelman Ross:  “We always talk about remembering in conjunction with the Holocaust. Remember the six million. The world must remember so that a holocaust can never again happen. Remember those who perished in order to honor them and give their deathsmeaning.”

“Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”  (Deuteronomy 6:7-9)

Pulitzer Prize winner, columnist, and author Leonard Pitts Jr. once asked two African American women to describe a lynching they witnessed in 1930. “I try and put that behind me,” said Sarah E. Weaver-Pate. “I’d just rather forget that.” “Why bring it up?” snapped Clara Jeffries. “It’s not helping anything. People don’t want to hear it.”

Writing in the Miami Herald, January 5, 2011, Pitts went on to say, “Every January we hear Martin Luther King’s great speech. Every February, school kids dress up as black inventors or social leaders. But there is in us — meaning the African-American community — a marked tendency to avoid the grit, gristle and grime of our history. The telling of those stories is neither institutionalized nor even particularly encouraged. It is time for that to change.”

My purpose is to contribute to that change; to be a voice telling our stories, including history, horror, and humor – lest our stories are co-opted and told for us by conservative revisionists.

— Bob Rogers

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Veterans and Beneficiaries Receive 2012 Cost of Living Adjustment

January 24, 2012

Information Available On-Line for E-Benefits Enrollees

WASHINGTON – Veterans, their families, and survivors receiving benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs saw a 3.6 percent increase in their compensation and pension benefits beginning January 1.

“Veterans, their families and their survivors are entitled to benefits that keep pace with the cost of living,” saidSecretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “VA is also using the latest technology to provide Veterans and theirfamilies with access to current information about their benefits.”

The new compensation rates will range from $127 monthly for a disability rated at 10 percent to $2,769 monthly for 100 percent.  The cost of living adjustments (COLAs) also apply to disability and death pension recipients, survivors receiving Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, disabled Veterans receiving automobile and clothing allowances, and other benefits.  The full rates are available on the Internet at www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/Rates/#BM01.

Under federal law, COLAs for VA’s compensation and pension rates are the same percentage as for Social Security benefits.  The last COLA for VA benefits was in 2008 when the last Social Security increase occurred.

“Veterans receiving VA disability and pension payments can now check their new 2012 COLA increase online,” said Under Secretary for Benefits Allison A. Hickey.  “I encourage all Veterans, their dependents and survivors to sign up for eBenefits, VA’s popular website that recently crossed the one million mark in registrations.”

In close collaboration, the Department of Defense (DoD) and VA jointly public_htmled the eBenefits portal (https://www.ebenefits.va.gov) as a single secure point of access for online benefit information and tools to perform multiple self-service functions, such as checking monthly benefit rates, filing a claim, or checking its status.

Veterans may enroll in eBenefits and obtain a Premium account by verifying their identity in-person at the nearest regional office or online depending on their status, or calling VA’s toll free number at 1-800-827-1000.

Servicemembers may also enroll in eBenefits using their Common Access Card at any time during their military service, or before they leave during their Transition Assistance Program briefings.

VA is enhancing its online eBenefits services with newer features such as online selection of Veterans organizations or other advocates to represent applicants for benefits where representation is desired.

Another new feature automates messages sent to Veterans and Servicemembers to notify them of benefits that they may be eligible to receive based on recent life events, such as military separation or marriage.

The site also continues to consolidate access to other VA and DoD systems through the portal, recently incorporating a gateway to vocational rehabilitation benefits under VA’s VetSuccess program.  Web access to information and benefits management tools for Servicemembers, Veterans and their families is part of VA and DoD’s lifetime engagement strategy from an individual’s entry into the military through the twilight years in civilian life as a Veteran.

VA provides non-taxable compensation and pension benefits to over four million Veterans, family members, and survivors.  Disability compensation is a non-taxable monetary benefit paid to Veterans who are disabled as a result of an injury or illness that was incurred or aggravated during active military service.

For more information about VA benefits or new payment rates, visit www.vba.va.gov  or call 1-800-827-1000.

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MILITARY NEWS

Military Health System Works to Slow Cost Growth

By Cheryl Pellerin American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2012 – The $50 billion military health system will plan for its future by slowing the growth rate of health care costs, strengthening partnerships and focusing on prevention, primary care and chronic disease management, the Defense Department’s top health official said this morning.

Dr. Jonathan Woodson, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs and director of the TRICARE Management Activity, addressed some of the 3,000 attendees at the 2012 Military Health System Conference here.

The military health system includes more than 133,000 military and civilian doctors, nurses, medical educators, researchers, health care providers, allied health professionals and health administration personnel around the world.  “The federal government, the Department of Defense and the military health system are at an inflection point,” Woodson said. “We must begin to plan for how our system will operate in the long term.”

In the background of everything that will be discussed at the conference this week, the vascular surgeon said, is the question of resources and prioritization.  Slowing the growth rate of health care costs, Woodson added, “will require a new commitment to collaboration among the services, where joint interests exist to reduce redundancy and waste.”

The military health system, he said, will expand partnerships and implement major initiatives addressing patient- centered medical homes, tobacco and obesity reduction, patient safety improvements and system-wide innovation.  A patient-centered medical home is a team-based way to care for a patient led by a personal physician who provides coordinated care throughout the patient’s life, Woodson explained.  “We are in the second full year of implementing the patient-centered medical home,” he said. “The early returns, with 2 million beneficiaries enrolled in medical homes, are very encouraging.” Fully functional medical homes are improving the delivery of preventive services, reducing inappropriate emergency room use and hospitalizations, and improving patient care experiences, he added.

Woodson said he will announce a new multi-year program this year to help service members deal with tobacco use and obesity.  “Our service members are using tobacco and tobacco products at a much higher rate than their peers in the civilian sector,” he said, and entry-level service members and retirees tend to public_html weight problems.

“We have the legal, statutory, moral and financial responsibility for care of retirees,” Woodson said, “and we must ensure that they maintain their health.”

This month, Woodson said, he will announce the implementation of a new comprehensive safety model for the militaryhealth system, establishing a performance model that is the best in the country.  “We have already shown on the battlefield that we have the ability to rapidly process information, understand best practices and disseminate them into the worldwide medical community,” he said. “We need to do the same in patient safety practices.”

Innovation is not a new concept in the Defense Department or in the military health system, Woodson said, “but we’ve got to undertake the process of innovation in a more strategic manner.”  To that end, he added, “I’ve tasked our innovation team with responsibility for finalizing and disseminating the knowledge sharing system within the military health system, open to the entire community and easily accessible so wecan communicate across the enterprise and across silos.”

Providing better care at reduced costs with improved outcomes and a focus on prevention, primary care and chronic disease management is not the role of doctors, nurses and pharmacists alone, Woodson said, but requires the work of the entire military community.  “We have engaged Gallup and Healthways to look at measures of overall community wellness and their insights into how communities can change behaviors,” he said. “We will move from health care to health by involving a larger set of partners.”

Strengthening partnerships is one way the military health system is preparing for the future.  “With the Department of Veterans Affairs, we have one overarching committee called the Joint Executive Committee,” Jo Ann Rooney, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and eadiness, said today.  “That’s where we address the large issues facing us between the two departments,” she added, “not only involving health care, but also how we continue to support service members and their families.”

One issue involves facilities, Rooney said, in determining “how the Defense Department can best use its resources and dollars to jointly public_html facilities that take us … into the future focused on the idea of health as well as health care.”

Other issues include how to streamline disability and evaluation processes and how to best address pharmacy use. “It’s not just about specific formulary or nonformulary drugs,” Rooney said. “It’s about shaping behavior so that we can best use our resources in pharmacy and pharmaceuticals to support warfighters and their families.”

Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, a registered nurse, said the Army has executed the health care mission with remarkable success through trying times, but that’s not good enough.  Despite a 90.1 percent survival rate in Afghanistan and 2011 investments of $315 million in enhanced behavioral health programs and $50 million in patient-centered care, Horoho described Army health problems still to be addressed.  In 2011, she said, more than 21,460 Army soldiers were medically nondeployable, 2,290 sexual assaults — which Horoho considers a medical problem — occurred, 278 soldiers committed suicide, and one soldier died from rabies, a preventable disease.  “My challenge and my personal belief,” she said, “is that we can be better. We absolutely must be better.”

The Internet and social media also will play a role in improving health, not just health care, for service members and their families, Horoho said.  In the future of military medicine, Horoho said she sees the support of military leadership, family and friends and outreach to patients through the Internet and social media with health care apps for vital signs, behavioral health and chronic disease management.  “Should we continue to invest in brick and mortar to enable our 100 minutes of health care,” she said, “or should we arm our beneficiaries with a Bluetooth-enabled scale and blood-pressure cuff for their home?”

Such technology will become more and more influential, she said.  “World class health care is what we do. We do it well, and we have international recognition for that,” the Army surgeon general said. “But we have to focus on health” — what Horoho calls the 99 percent of a patient’s life that occurs when they’re not spending 100 minutes at their annual medical appointment.

For military health patients, health happens between the 100-minute medical visits, Horoho said, “and that is where we as individuals, we as the military health system and we as a nation absolutely must go.”

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