The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has issued an $18 million, three-year contract to Atlas Research to identify and implement innovations that improve access to care, care coordination, employee engagement, quality, and safety for the 8.76 million Veterans who receive care at more than 1,700 VHA sites each year.
VHA’s challenge is to develop an Innovation Ecosystem to find the smart solutions its employees have developed to solve problems, and to share those innovations with others, with the goal of improving care for Veterans.
Members of the Atlas project team will facilitate continued improvement to the VHA Innovation Ecosystem and accelerate its progress toward becoming a Learning Health System and High Reliability Organization. This will help in empowering VHA’s approximately 300,000 employees to develop and implement innovative approaches to deliver world-class medical care, benefit administration, electronic health records, and customer service to Veterans and their families while promulgating top innovations across the VA organization and its support systems.
VA is constantly innovating around its many major initiatives enterprise-wide, including the implementation of its electronic health record management system. The innovation ecosystem could serve as a catalyst for this type of innovation as well.
Two key initiatives, the Innovators Network and the Diffusion of Excellence Program, are core components of VHA and are at the forefront of its ongoing innovation efforts. Well-recognized components of these initiatives include the VHA Innovation Experience, the annual Shark Tank competition, and the Spark-Seed-Spread Innovation Investment Program.
The programs have significant impact. Since the establishment of the Diffusion of Excellence in 2015, 36 “Gold Status Practices” have been replicated over 40 times times in VA facilities across the country, resulting in cost savings of more than $22M and over 3,200 hours of VA employee time, and improving experiences for over 100,000 Veterans.
“We’re thrilled to continue our support of this transformational effort, and to aid VHA in improving quality, safety, experience, and access to care for Veterans,” said Atlas President and Chief Executive Officer Robin Portman. “The unique approach they’ve taken to discover, communicate, and implement employee-driven solutions is one that can be a model for other health care systems.”