Top 10 Veterans Stories in Today’s News

From The VA

VA’s Industry Innovation Competition

On Monday, Secretary Shinseki announced the opening of the VA Innovation Initiative’s Industry Innovation Competition, inviting the private sector to propose solutions that impact some of VA’s most significant challenges.  Learn more

Top Veterans Stories in Today’s News

1. VA opens $80 million innovation competition The Department of Veterans Affairs announced an $80 million competition Monday that asks the private sector to address some of the department’s biggest challenges. Secretary Eric Shinseki said the competition, part of the VA’s department-wide Innovation Initiative (VAi2), will attempt to encourage advancements in areas as diverse as housing technology for homeless veterans, telehealth solutions for veterans needing home care, and new technologies to prevent renal disease.
2. Helping veterans exposed to asbestos Determination of service connection will be based on review of the entire evidence of record. Since no presumption of service connection is applicable to disabilities resulting from asbestos exposure, service connection requires showing inception or aggravation during service. The Sarge is looking forward to joining invited guests and the general public as we celebrate Flag Week on Capitol Hill. There will be a special performance on June 15 at the Capitol by the Aloha Boys, a group that was born and raised in Hawaii and later transplanted to the D.C. area.
3. Report: Rape, sex, abuse at University City nursing home for veterans Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services found serious violations regarding allegations of physical, sexual and verbal abuse inside a University City nursing home for veterans. The I-Team obtained the 21 page report Tuesday night. The state had been investigating the K.F. Jammer Manor, West facility since April and recently completed its investigation.
4. HHS, VA will add download feature to patient portals The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Veterans Affairs Department plan to add a feature to their electronic patient portals to let beneficiaries download their personal health information into a patient health record or other electronic media of their choosing. To date, veterans and seniors have been able only to review their data on CMS’s MyMedicare.gov and VA’s MyHealtheVet patient Web portals. The “blue button” initiative, named for a new electronic button on the portal sites, will let patients use their data in any way they choose, said Todd Park, HHS’s chief technology officer.
5. Winners of the VHA/OIT Innovation Competition announced Washington – Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki recently announced the 26 winning ideas in the Veterans Health Administration / Office of Information and Technology (VHA/OIT) Innovation Competition. An employee competition launched in February 2010, the VHA/OIT Innovation Competition solicited health care IT solutions that move VA forward in its transformation to a provider of 21st-century services for our nation’s Veterans.
6. Senator challenges VA’s coverage of 3 new illnesses linked to Agent Orange A U.S. senator who is also a highly decorated Vietnam veteran has called into question the spiraling costs of disability claims stemming from veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides during the Vietnam War. Late last week, Sen. Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat and former secretary of the Navy, sent a letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki — another decorated Vietnam veteran — raising concerns over Shinseki’s move to add three more illnesses to the list of ailments for which the VA provides compensation.
7. One-Third of Veterans May Experience PTSD, Depression Up to a third of veterans returning from combat may experience depression or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), often along with alcohol misuse or aggressive behavior comorbidity, and the risk of developing dementia is nearly twice as high in veterans with PTSD as in those without, according to the results of two studies published in the June issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
8. Veterans cemeteries offer some significant benefits Now days we hear a lot of poor mouth talk about how little our government does for the service people. This Memorial Day brought to mind the National Memorial Cemeteries. It would be interesting to know just how many of them there are and how many of them are in each state. I just today saw some pictures of the less than one-year-old Memorial Cemetery there in Abilene, and it is a very interesting and beautiful place. It is my understanding that a veteran can be buried in one of these cemeteries for very little if anything. That is a very substantial service.
9. Veterans’ hopes answered in bus stop dilemma At 81, Bayshore Gardens resident Art Andreasen had reached a point in his life where he tried not to sweat the details. But there was one thing that irritated this Korean War veteran. The Manatee County Area Transit bus driver who took him east along State Road 64 for his morning doctor appointments had a fixed route and couldn’t pull his bus off the highway to drop Andreasen or any other elderly or infirm person closer to the new Bradenton VA Clinic near Morgan Johnson Road.
10. Heat pump to reduce energy use undergoing tests A 200-foot hole will be drilled into Richmond district soil to test whether the air is dense enough to help heat and air condition veterans facilities aboveground. The ground-source heat pump would be the second in The City — the other one is at City College of San Francisco’s Balboa Reservoir — and could help the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reach its goal of cutting its energy use by 3 percent, an annual mandate for all federal buildings.