BY BOB BREWIN
The Veterans Affairs Department has started inching toward deployment of an online comprehensive health care and benefits portal recommended by the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors in an August 2007 report. VA expects to have a bare-bones site operating in the next few weeks on Army Knowledge On-Line (AKO), the Army's enterprise Web portal.
The Wounded Warriors Commission recommended that VA and the Defense Department develop within a year a Web-based portal to provide patients with health care and benefits information from the two departments. On March 11, top VA and Defense officials told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee that they intend to develop Web portals that integrate veterans' heath records on a comprehensive Web site, which also provides information on follow-up services.
Retired Air Force Col. Peter Bunce, father of Justin Bunce, a medically retired Marine Corporal severely wounded in Iraq, said in an interview that a Web portal was only as good as the information it contained. He urged that Web-based systems established by Defense and VA contain information on a range of clinical resources, including care available outside the VA and Defense health systems. Bunce said he found health care and specialists for his son Justin, who also suffers from traumatic brain injury, without VA's help.
Full story: http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080314_9029.php?zone=ngtoday <http://gove-media.com/portal/wts/cgmcfOcz-qeci76dwtF6m7-Mkba>
