HP Selected to Help Improve VA Health Care Operations

January 30, 2013 1460 Views Governor Pat McCrory, House Public Utilities Committee, Mike Hager, Space Systems/Loral, Western U.S.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) awarded a $543 million contract to HP Enterprise Services, a division of Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard, for its Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Real-Time Location System (RTLS). The contract will serve to launch a management system that will help automate and improve upon operations and veteran health care services.

The VA wants to enhance patient-focused health care while reducing operational costs and plans to do so by standardizing clinical and business practices and monitoring IT services. As part of the contract, the VA requires HP to provide a set of nationally standardized RTLS solutions to the Veteran Health Administration hospitals, clinics, offices and cemeteries, which will help improve the efficiency and quality of veteran health care.

The RTLS contract will equip 152 medical centers in the 21 Veteran Integrated Service Networks and seven Consolidated Medical Outpatient Pharmacy facilities with real-time location technologies that will help identify, locate and monitor supplies between facilities. As a result, the system will serve to improve consistency of services, managerial decision support, the use of equipment and staff, and customer satisfaction by decreasing operational costs, minimizing lost and misplaced items and increasing clinical efficiencies.

“The quality of veteran care and improving the delivery of our health care services are the driving forces behind implementing the RTLS solution,” said Kimberly Brayley, director, RTLS project Management Office, Veteran Health Administration, in a statement. “Leveraging the state-of-the-art technology allows VA to decrease operational costs and increase efficiencies, satisfaction and quality health care delivery.”

To help support the RTLS program, HP is collaborating with businesses such as CenTrak, Intelligent InSites and WaveMark to perform development, integration, implementation, testing, training and support functions.

Under the RTLS VISN 11 contract awarded in February 2012, RTLS implementations are nearly complete in two VISN 11 hospitals; another installation began in October; three are currently in progress; and the final center is supposed to go live this summer. With this new contract, the HP team will augment these already existing RTLS installations.