Orlando VA Updates

Our Associate Director, Kalautie S. JangDhari, has accepted a position as the Medical Center Director of the West Texas Veterans Health Care System effective December 11,2016.  As many of you know, Ms. JangDhari has been serving as the Interim Director at West Texas since November 2015. Ivan Itebejac our Chief of Pharmacy has been our Acting Associate Director and will remain in this position until we hire a new Associate Director.

Also you may have seen the story about the Orlando VA in the news related to a story that ran in USA Today. Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning (SAIL) is an internal guide to identify and focus on areas for improvement. We use quarterly SAIL data to ensure that we have a comprehensive assessment of all aspects of health care services. 

The article in USA Today sites older data but our recent SAIL metrics show a significant improvement in individual metrics as well as a change in our rating to a 4 Star in FY16 QTR3 (this is a 5 star program). Many program efforts have contributed to our rating increase. This includes addressing access concerns with a variety of modalities, such as direct scheduling in our audiology and optometry clinics, our 24 hour Urgent Care Center, and increasing same day access.

We have also focused on preventive health measures, including the recent development of a clinic for complex heart failure patients who require frequent monitoring, medication adjustments, and hospitalizations. The Orlando VA Medical Center was the first VA entity in Florida to insert a Cardio MEMS device to support our care of patients with these special cardiac needs.

This year’s addition of acute care hospital beds serve our Veterans well while positively impacting our SAIL measures as we direct attention to keeping patients safe from infections and other harm. The plan to incrementally phase in active hospital beds is showing success even in the limited inpatient hospital data we currently have, reflecting lower mortality rates, fewer central line, urinary catheter, and MRSA infections, and shorter than average lengths of stay.

~ Heather Frebe
Public Affairs Officer, Orlando VA Medical Center