Translating standards into practice: experience and lessons learned at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The increased need for interoperable electronic health records in health care organizations underscores the importance of standards. The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a long history of developing and adopting various types of health care data standards. The authors present in detail their experience in this domain.

A simple strategy for implementing standard reference terminologies in a distributed healthcare delivery system with minimal impact to existing applications.

The Veterans Administration (VA) has adopted an ambitious program to standardize its clinical terminology to comply with industry-wide standards. The VA is using commercially available tools and in-house software to create a high-quality reference terminology system. The terminology will be used by current and future applications with no planned disruption to operational systems.

Timing of initiation of rehabilitation after stroke.

Unlabelled: Maulden SA, Gassaway J, Horn SD, Smout RJ, DeJong G. Timing of initiation of rehabilitation after stroke.

Objective: To study associations between days from stroke symptom onset to rehabilitation admission and rehabilitation outcomes, controlling for a variety of confounding variables.