The Office of Health Equity (OHE) created the Hepatitis C-Advanced Liver Disease (HCV-ALD) dashboard to raise awareness of potential disparities among vulnerable Veterans for this life-threatening condition. The purpose of the HCV-ALD Dashboard is promote equitable diagnosis and treatment of underserved Veterans with hepatitis C and advanced liver disease. The Hepatitis C-ALD Dashboard utilizes a set of criteria - age, gender, geography, service era, race/ethnicity - to characterize Veteran groups with ALD due to hepatitis C who may require targeted intervention to improve their health. The dashboard advances the vision for quality care and improved access to care as identified in the VHA Blueprint for Excellence.

Voluntary Service System (VSS) is a national-level application which replaced the site-based Voluntary Timekeeping System (VTK). VTK was used for many years at the Veterans Affairs Medical Centers to track and manage the hours of service contributed by volunteers and volunteer organizations. Consistency of data between sites was a problem and the process of compiling national VTK reports was slow and costly. Many steps were involved because national data was only consolidated once a month and it was usually out of sync. Improved data collection and reporting is now available since users interact directly with a centralized national database. Rehosted VSS uses .NET technology that replaced data transmissions between sites and the Austin Information Technology Center to produce the consolidated national reports. Direct access to data provides instantaneous updates and up-to-the-minute reporting for all users. Central Office administrators and Voluntary staff now have broader more reliable data for managing Volunteer Services.

Patient appointment information is obtained from the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture Scheduling module. The Patient Appointment Information application gathers appointment data to be loaded into a national database for statistical reporting. Patient appointments are scanned from September 1, 2002 to the present, and appointment data meeting specified criteria are transmitted to the Austin Information Technology Center Patient Appointment Information Transmission (PAIT) national database. Subsequent transmissions (bi-monthly) update PAIT bi-monthly via Health Level Seven message transmissions through Vitria Interface Engine (VIE) connections. A Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) program in Austin utilizes PAIT data to create a bi-monthly SAS dataset on the Austin mainframe. This additional data is used to supplement the existing Clinic Appointment Wait Time and Clinic Utilization extracts created by the Veterans Health Administration Support Service Center (VSSC).

The Primary Care Management Module (PCMM) was developed to assist VA facilities in implementing Primary Care. PCMM supports both Primary Care and non-Primary Care teams. The software allows the user to set up and define a team, assign positions to the team, assign staff to the positions, assign patients to the team, and assign patients to a Primary Care Provider (PCP) or Associate Provider (AP). In a Primary Care setting, patients are assigned a PCP, Associate Provider (AP) and/or a Transition Patient Advocate (TPA) who is responsible for delivering essential health care, coordinating all health care services, and serving as the point of access for specialty care. The PCP is supported by a team of professionals which may include nurses, pharmacists, social workers, etc. Associate Providers are non-physician clinicians (such as Physicians Assistants, Nurse Practitioners or Residents) who may provide care under the supervision of a presiding PCP. The PCMM software is considered to be an important component to measure patient demand and the PCPs capacity to meet that demand and to reduce wait times. PCMM was developed to assist facilities in implementing primary care for veterans. It uses the site's data to identify patients and to assign them to a PCP. PCMM provides tools to facilitate the startup process, automating such tasks as identifying patients to be assigned to primary care; assigning patients to teams, and assigning patients to practitioners via team positions.

The VHA Support Service Center Capital Assets Databases is a web based project application and tracking database. This is used for capital project application submissions and capital project tracking for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Minor, Clinical Specific Initiative (CSI) and Non-recurring Maintenance (NRM) Programs. Annually, VHA Facilities enter project applications. Monthly, the VHA facilities update the schedule and cost information for approved projects.

Networks are able to update on an ongoing basis data originally added to the Veterans Health Administration Physician Productivity and Staffing initiative to ensure that it reflects current conditions. This data access link function is restricted to a limited number of Network representatives. All the available facility, Network, and National Primary Care Staff and Room Utilization reports are available. In addition key guidance documents are available to people without edit access.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Leadership and Workforce Development System (VHALWD) has 36 separate databases that contain information on people, positions, and organizations, work groups, workforce, workforce and leadership classes, workforce development programs and participation, personal development plans, supervisory levels, mentor and coach attributes, High Performance Development Model (HPDM) core competency, intern data, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) reporting, succession planning, workforce planning, senior executive information, applicant tracking and recruitment, Executive Career Field (ECF) position and performance information, and education funding and programs. The VHA Executive Management Program consists of the functions that fall under the purview of the VHA Executive Resources Board (ERB) and the VHA Performance Review Board (PRB). Their functions include executive development, recruitment and placement, organizational analysis, succession planning, workforce planning, EEO and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) assessment, workload tracking and reporting of human capital and HR, and individual and organizational performance assessment and recognition. The method used to collect this information is a proprietary system using relational database technology. Information from these databases are joined and expanded to inform programs and processes. This combination of information is used in the administration of talent management, VHA human capital objectives, and in the support of the ERB and PRB functions.

The Veterans Equitable Resource Allocation (VERA) database, is operated by the Allocation Resource Center (ARC) in Braintree, MA. The ARC is part of the Resource Allocation & Execution Office of the Office of Finance. The database is developed from the Patient Treatment File, National Patient Care Database, Fee Basis Medical and Pharmacy System, Decision Support System (DSS) National extracts, DSS Derived Monthly Program Cost Report (MPCR), Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI) Minimum Data Set (MDS), Clinical Case Registry (CCR), and Home Dialysis Data Collection System, the Pharmacy Benefits Management database and the Consolidated Enrollment File. Most of the clinical data is Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture data which is transmitted to the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) where it is retrieved by the ARC each month. The ARC also retrieves DSS cost data from the AITC as well. Some additional information is received from the Hines Pharmacy Benefits Management and the CCR databases. The data from these sources is combined to develop patient-specific care and cost data for each hospitalization or visit at the location or treatment level. Aggregate tables summarize this data for reporting and analysis purposes. The VERA databases are the basis for resource allocation in the Veterans Health Administration.

The Veterans Affairs Central Cancer Registry (VACCR) receives and stores information on cancer diagnosis and treatment constraints compiled and sent in by the local cancer registry staff at each of the 132 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers that diagnose and/or treat Veterans with cancer. The information sent is encoded to meet the site-specific requirements for registry inclusion as established by several oversight bodies, including the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, the American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer, and the American Joint Commission on Cancer, among others. The information is obtained from a wide variety of medical record documents at the local medical center pertaining to each Veterans Health Administration (VHA) cancer patient. The information is then transmitted to the VACCR. Details collected include extensive demographics, cancer identification, extent of disease and staging, first course of treatment, and outcomes. Data extraction is available to researchers with VA approved Institutional Review Board studies, peer review, and Data Use Agreements.

Combined cancer registry data from all VHA facilities. Includes North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, Inc. (NAACCR).