The Best Health Care System in America

It comes as a surprise to some people who had experience with VA health care during the 1970's and 1980's that this same system is now considered the best medical care in the Unite States.  In a Business Week article on July 17, 2008 it was reported that "To much of the public, though, the VA's image is hobbled by its inglorious past.  For decades the VA was the health care system of last resort...The huge system had deteriorated so badly by the early 90's that Congress considered disbanding it.  Instead the VA was reinvented in every way possible.  In the mid-1990's, Dr. Kenneth Kizer, then the VA's Health Under Secretary, installed the most extensive electronic medical records system in the U.S.  Kizer also decentralized decision making, closed underused hospitals, reallocated resources and most critically, instituted a culture of accountabliity and quality measurements."  "Our whole motivation was to make the system work for the patient," says Kizeer, now director of the National Quality Forum, a nonprofit dedicated to improving health care. We did a top-to-bottom makeover with that goal always in mind".