Paul Volberding
Paul Volberding, MD, chief of the Medical Service at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and professor and vice chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF, will join San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and community health experts at a town hall forum on health care.
The discussion, titled “The American Public on Health Care: The Missing Perspective,” takes place on Tuesday, June 17, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Robertson Auditorium on the UCSF Mission Bay campus, 1675 Owens St.
Sponsored by the Council for Excellence in Government, a nonprofit organization founded in 1983, the event is being held to foster discussion about the complex issues surrounding health care policy.
In part, the discussion will look at what works and what doesn’t work in California and nationwide.
“The Veterans Affairs health care system provides, in many respects, an important model of a national approach,” said Volberding. “On many occasions, it has been judged to provide better care than the private sector. The VA experience should be included in any discussion of solutions to our nation’s health care crisis.”
The VA’s fully integrated electronic medical record system, called the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA, is one example of how the VA is leading the way for other hospitals around the country.
For each patient, all diagnoses, notes, lab results, medical images and prescriptions originating from any of the 1,400 or so VA clinics and hospitals throughout the country are contained within a single electronic medical record. Important information is not lost, and it is less likely to be overlooked.
“If people were more aware of how big a problem medical record systems have been historically in terms of improving the quality of care that’s delivered in hospitals and clinics in the US, and in terms of our ability to measure the quality of the care, more people would look to the VA and VistA as the model,” Volberding said in an interview with UCSF Today.
Joining Mayor Newsom and Volberding on the panel are:
• Daniel Zingale, senior adviser to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Mitchell Katz, MD, San Francisco Director of Health
• Ken Shachmut, senior vice president, Safeway
• Ana Valdez, MD, medical director, St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic
• Harvey Fineberg, MD, PhD, president, Institute of Medicine
• Patricia McGinnis, president and CEO, Council for Excellence in Government
• Frank Sesno, television journalist and moderator
The event will be transmitted live via webcast. Doors to the event open at 6:15 p.m. Organizers are requesting that attendees RSVP by visiting the Council for Excellence in Government website.
