VACAA Case Study

After the wait-time scandal at the Arizona VA in 2014, the President Obama signed the law, the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 (Public Law 113-146, “VACAA”) in order to improve access to health care for the Veterans in a timely manner with great bipartisan support (Branchely, 2014). This bill includes several initiatives to improve the current standards of care and decrease wait times. In order to urgently address the situation, the law recommends hiring more resources, introducing ways to promote timely care for Veterans, and increasing accountability. The section 101 of VACAA lists necessary details to bring some positive changes to the organization. It specifies that the VA is required to expand options for health care for eligible Veterans by allowing them to receive care up to three years based on the distance a Veteran lives from a VA facility or if the wait-time is extended beyond the 30 days. VACAA allows $10 billion funding, in which VA will pay for non-VA care established as part of a network of Choice providers. Although every Veteran enrolled in the VA health care system as of August 1, 2014 was provided with a Choice Card, Veterans have to meet certain …show more content…
Many e-Rx systems offer various useful features such as allergy checks, drug-drug interactions, disease-drug interactions, and many others although they may not be as comprehensive as full EHRs. Also, this project will only involve prescriptions incoming from non-VA providers. Outbound prescriptions from VA providers to outside pharmacies will be excluded since a majority of Veterans prefers obtaining prescriptions at the VA as the costs of obtaining their medications at the VA tend to be much lower than those at other