A system of records is a file, database, or program from which personal information is retrieved by name or other personal identifier. The Privacy Act provides a number of protections for your personal information. These typically include how information is collected, used, disclosed, stored, and disposed.As part of our privacy policy, VA conducts an annual review of our Privacy Act system of record notices to make sure that they are current and republishes those that require changes or updates.Please select the link to download the excel spreadsheet via the link labeled: 'Privacy Act System of Record'.The spreadsheet contains the following fields: SOR #, PUB DATE, CITATION, HYPERLINK TO FEDERAL REGISTER, SYSTEM TITLE, and POC.

As of June 28, 2010, the Master Veteran Index (MVI) database based on the enhanced Master Patient Index (MPI) is the authoritative identity service within the VA, establishing, maintaining and synchronizing identities for VA clients, Veterans and beneficiaries. The MVI includes authoritative sources for health identity data and contains over 17 million patient entries populated from all VHA facilities nationwide. The MVI provides the access point mechanism for linking patient's information to enable an enterprise-wide view of patient information, uniquely identifies all active patients who have been admitted, treated, or registered in any VHA facility, and assigns a unique identifier to the patient. The MVI correlates a patient's identity across the enterprise, including all VistA systems and external systems, such as Department of Defense (DoD) and the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN). The MVI facilitates the sharing of health information, resulting in coordinated and integrated health care for Veterans. New Information Technology systems must be interoperable with the MVI and legacy systems will establish integration by October 1, 2012. The Healthcare Identity Management (HC IdM) Team within VHA's Data Quality Program is the steward of patient identity data, performing maintenance and support activities.

The Veterans Health Administration Medical Facilities dataset includes Veteran Affairs hospitals, Veteran Affairs Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Programs (RRTP), Veteran Affairs Nursing Home Care Units (NHCU), Veteran Affairs Outpatient Clinics (VAOC), Vet Centers, and Veteran Affairs Medical Centers (VAMC). It should not include planned and suspended (non-operational) sites and mobile clinics. These definitions were set by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Policy Board in December 1998 and are the basis for defining the category and the additional service types for each VHA service site. These definitions cover sites generally owned by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with the exception of leased and contracted community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs).1. VA HOSPITAL: an institution (health care site) that is owned, staffed and operated by VA and whose primary function is to provide inpatient services. NOTE: Each geographically unique inpatient division of an integrated facility is counted as a separate hospital.2. VA RESIDENTIAL REHABILITATION TREATMENT PROGRAM (RRTP): provides comprehensive health and social services in a VA facility for eligible veterans who are ambulatory and do not require the level of care provided in nursing homes.3. VA NURSING HOME CARE UNITS (NHCU): provides care to individuals who are not in need of hospital care, but who require nursing care and related medical or psychosocial services in an institutional setting. VA NHCUs are facilities designed to care for patients who require a comprehensive care management system coordinated by an interdisciplinary team. Services provided include nursing, medical, rehabilitative, recreational, dietetic, psychosocial, pharmaceutical, radiological, laboratory, dental and spiritual.4. VA OUTPATIENT CLINICS:a. Community-Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC): a VA-operated, VA-funded, or VA-reimbursed health care facility or site geographically distinct or separate from a parent medical facility. This term encompasses all types of VA outpatient clinics, except hospital-based, independent and mobile clinics. Satellite, community-based, and outreach clinics have been redefined as CBOCs. Technically, CBOCs fall into four Categories, which are: >(i) VA-owned. A CBOC that is owned and staffed by VA. >(ii) Leased. A CBOC where the space is leased (contracted), but is staffed by VA. NOTE: This includes donated space staffed by VA. >(iii) Contracted. A CBOC where the space and the staff are not VA. This is typically a Healthcare Management Organization (HMO)-type provided where multiple sites can be associated with a single station identifier. >(iv) Not Operational. A CBOC which has been approved by Congress, but has not yet begun operating.b. Hospital-Based Outpatient Clinic: outpatient clinic functions located at a hospital.c. Independent Outpatient Clinic: a full-time, self-contained, freestanding, ambulatory care clinic that has no management, program, or fiscal relationship to a VA medical facility. Primary and specialty health care services are provided in an outpatient setting.5. VET CENTER: Provides professional readjustment counseling, community education, outreach to special populations, brokering of services with community agencies, and access to links between the veteran and VA.6. VA MEDICAL CENTER (VAMC): a medical center is a unique VA site of care providing two or more types of services that reside at a single physical site location. The services provided are the primary service as tracked in the VHA Site Tracking (VAST) (i.e., VA Hospital, Nursing Home, Domiciliary, independent outpatient clinic (IOC), hospital-based outpatient clinic (HBOC), and CBOC). The definition of VA medical center does not include the Vet Centers as an identifying service. This dataset is based upon GFI data received from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). At the request of NGA, text fields in this dataset have been set to all upper case to facilitate consistent database engine search results. At the request of NGA, all diacritics (e.g., the German umlaut or the Spanish tilde) have been replaced with their closest equivalent English character to facilitate use with database systems that may not support diacritics. The currentness of this dataset is indicated by the [CONTDATE] attribute. Based upon this attribute, the oldest record dates from 09/21/2007 and the newest record dates from 10/15/2007.

The VA National Bed Control System records the levels of operating, unavailable and authorized beds at each VAMC, and it tracks requests for changes in these levels. For changes in operating, unavailable and authorized bed levels, the Director of a Medical Center or his/her authorized delegate enters a bed change request into the Bed Control Database. A Bed Control Database trigger automatically notifies the respective Veterans Integrated Support Network (VISN) director. The VISN director's designated staff reviews the request and either approves, disapproves, or cancels it through the Bed Control Database. If a medical center request is approved by the VISN director, a Bed Control Database trigger notifies staff in the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations and Management (10N) to review and take action, followed by the appropriate VHA Program Office and then the Under Secretary for Health. Once a request has been approved, cancelled, or disapproved by either the Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations and Management, VHA Program Office, or the Under Secretary for Health, the medical center director and the appropriate VISN director are automatically notified of the action. The approval process is tracked and visible to the authorized user of the system. When changes are approved, the database updates its bed level information accordingly. Pertinent justification and documents associated with each bed change request are stored in the database.

The Nuclear Medicine National HQ System database is a series of MS Excel spreadsheets and Access Database Tables by fiscal year. They consist of information from all Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) performing or contracting nuclear medicine services in Veterans Affairs medical facilities. The medical centers are required to complete questionnaires annually (RCS 10-0010-Nuclear Medicine Service Annual Report). The information is then manually entered into the Access Tables, which includes: * Distribution and cost of in-house VA - Contract Physician Services, whether contracted services are made via sharing agreement (with another VA medical facility or other government medical providers) or with private providers. * Workload data for the performance and/or purchase of PET/CT studies. * Organizational structure of services. * Updated changes in key imaging service personnel (chiefs, chief technicians, radiation safety officers). * Workload data on the number and type of studies (scans) performed, including Medicare Relative Value Units (RVUs), also referred to as Weighted Work Units (WWUs). WWUs are a workload measure calculated as the product of a study's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code, which consists of total work costs (the cost of physician medical expertise and time), and total practice costs (the costs of running a practice, such as equipment, supplies, salaries, utilities etc). Medicare combines WWUs together with one other parameter to derive RVUs, a workload measure widely used in the health care industry. WWUs allow Nuclear Medicine to account for the complexity of each study in assessing workload, that some studies are more time consuming and require higher levels of expertise. This gives a more accurate picture of workload; productivity etc than using just 'total studies' would yield. * A detailed Full-Time Equivalent Employee (FTEE) grid, and staffing distributions of FTEEs across nuclear medicine services. * Information on Radiation Safety Committees and Radiation Safety Officers (RSOs). Beginning in 2011 this will include data collection on part-time and non VA (contract) RSOs; other affiliations they may have and if so to whom they report (supervision) at their VA medical center.Collection of data on nuclear medicine services' progress in meeting the special needs of our female veterans. Revolving documentation of all major VA-owned gamma cameras (by type) and computer systems, their specifications and ages. * Revolving data collection for PET/CT cameras owned or leased by VA; and the numbers and types of PET/CT studies performed on VA patients whether produced on-site, via mobile PET/CT contract or from non-VA providers in the community. Types of educational training/certification programs available at VA sites * Ongoing funded research projects by Nuclear Medicine (NM) staff, identified by source of funding and research purpose. * Data on physician-specific quality indicators at each nuclear medicine service. Academic achievements by NM staff, including published books/chapters, journals and abstracts. * Information from polling field sites re: relevant issues and programs Headquarters needs to address. * Results of a Congressionally mandated contracted quality assessment exercise, also known as a Proficiency study. Study results are analyzed for comparison within VA facilities (for example by mission or size), and against participating private sector health care groups. * Information collected on current issues in nuclear medicine as they arise. Radiation Safety Committee structures and membership, Radiation Safety Officer information and information on how nuclear medicine services provided for female Veterans are examples of current issues.The database is now stored completely within MS Access Database Tables with output still presented in the form of Excel graphs and tables.

The Patient Advocate Tracking System (PATS) is a centralized, web based application that records and tracks instances of patient compliments and complaints concerning their care at VA health care facilities. These instances of patient contacts may come from a variety of sources including the patient, family members, congressional members and/or Veterans service organizations on behalf of the Veterans receiving care at VA facilities. This database provides a menu of reports that can be used to track and trend data across Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs). Reports of contact allow the Patient Advocate to trend compliments and complaints, and ensure that issues raised are resolved. The reports include data such as patient demographics, date of contact, method of contact, who made the contact, issues involved, what service was involved, resolution date and resolution status. Data is collected from Veterans Affairs Medical Centers and sent to the VHA Support Service Center (VSSC) where the data is maintained and reports created.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has now collaborated with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to present information to consumers about the quality and safety of health care in VHA. VHA has approximately 50 percent of Veterans enrolled in the healthcare system who are eligible for Medicare and, therefore, have some choice in how and where they receive inpatient services. VHA has adopted healthcare transparency as a strategy to enhance public trust and to help Veterans make informed choices about their health care.VHA currently reports the following types of quality measures on Hospital Compare:Timely and effective care.Behavioral health.Readmissions and deaths.Patient safety.*Experience of care.

The Veterans Equitable Resource Allocation (VERA) database, is operated by the Allocation Resource Center (ARC) in Braintree, MA. The ARC is part of the Resource Allocation & Execution Office of the Office of Finance. The database is developed from the Patient Treatment File, National Patient Care Database, Fee Basis Medical and Pharmacy System, Decision Support System (DSS) National extracts, DSS Derived Monthly Program Cost Report (MPCR), Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI) Minimum Data Set (MDS), Clinical Case Registry (CCR), and Home Dialysis Data Collection System, the Pharmacy Benefits Management database and the Consolidated Enrollment File. Most of the clinical data is Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture data which is transmitted to the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) where it is retrieved by the ARC each month. The ARC also retrieves DSS cost data from the AITC as well. Some additional information is received from the Hines Pharmacy Benefits Management and the CCR databases. The data from these sources is combined to develop patient-specific care and cost data for each hospitalization or visit at the location or treatment level. Aggregate tables summarize this data for reporting and analysis purposes. The VERA databases are the basis for resource allocation in the Veterans Health Administration.

The Plan Library Information and Retrieval System (PLIARS) is an electronic catalogue of microfilmed Contract and As-Built drawings of VA building plans and cemeteries. It is a single flat file list of the more than 500,000 aperture cards stored at the Veterans Affairs Central Office (VACO). Each record contains an entry for Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) station number, date, building number, a code representing the discipline, project number, floor, and wing. Disciplines include architectural, electrical, mechanical, structural, etc. Hard copy of the plans are stored at each VAMC. The plans are microfilmed at the National Archives and aperture cards are produced for both Contract and As-Built stages of the contract. An original copy of each aperture card is kept at the National Archives, with copies to VACO and the VAMC. The Program Planning and Management Office enters a record into PLIARS for each new card the VACO receives. They are also responsible for maintaining the database. Primary users of the PLIARS database are contractors hired to do work. In-house technical staff and the Engineering offices at the VAMC's. Users of PLIARS can request aperture cards for the buildings, disciplines, projects and medical centers as needed. Staff pull the aperture cards from the files and make either half or full size blow-ups of the drawings.

The Non-VA Care Medical and Pharmacy System (FEE) automates the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Fee for Service program. It authorizes and pays private physicians, hospitals, and pharmacists for products and services provided to Veterans approved for the program. Veterans are reimbursed through VistA Fee for medically-related expenses including travel. Information is entered into the VistA Fee system through Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) online menus. VistA Fee is run at the Austin Information Technology Center and interfaces with the Financial Management System (FMS), the Beneficiary Identification and Records Locator System (BIRLS), and the VHA Work Measurement database (VWM), to produce payments, accounting updates, and reports. VistA Fee facilitates money management, master record updating, and input error resolution. Daily reports indicating all payments processed and erroneous input transactions are transmitted to approximately 170 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs). Letters are sent to Veterans on a monthly basis detailing payments made on their behalf to Non-VA Care Service providers. Monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports are sent to the Veterans Affairs Central Office (VACO) and VAMCs. The Non-VA Care Fee Basis Medical System is commonly referred to as Central FEE.

The authoritative source for person identity data. Maintains identity data for persons across VA systems. Provides a unique universal identifier for each person. Stores identity data as correlations for each system where a person is known. Provides a probabilistic matching algorithm. (Includes MPI, PSIM, and IdM TK) Maintains a gold copy known as a Primary View of the persons identity data. Broadcasts identity trait updates to systems of interest. Maintains a record locator service.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) pays for care provided to VA beneficiaries in non-VA hospitals through its contract hospitalization program as mandated by Congress in the late 1980s. The Non-VA Hospital System (NVH) software captures the patient's Demographics, Provider, Hospital Name and Location, Medicare Provider Number, Diagnoses and Procedures for which the patient received care during his/her inpatient stay. The data is received from either the patient or the medical center providing the care (normally on a UB-92 form). The billing office employee enters the information into Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture and sends information to the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC). The non-VA hospitals are reimbursed at Medicare rates based on the Prospective System (PPS). PPS uses the appropriate Diagnostic Related Groups (DRGs). Each DRG has a different rate-adjusted reimbursement based on the regional and urban/rural designation of the provider non-VA Hospitals. NVH is housed at the AITC and uses software developed by the AITC in conjunction with 3M and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). It is a batch system written in Common Business Oriented Language, ALC, and Statistical Analysis Software. Processing occurs daily.

The Research and Development Information System (RDIS) is the Veterans Affairs Central Office budgetary and project data repository for managing the VA Research and Development Program. The RDIS contains data collected from Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) on all VA research projects. It stores information on VAMC investigators, project budget allocations and expenditures, initial project abstracts, progress reports and research space. VA Medical Centers collect and submit the data using an application called electronic Project Management and Information System (ePROMISE). That data is submitted to Veterans Affairs Central Office and becomes a component of RDIS. ePROMISE collects data from over 150 VA facilities (including 75 VAMCs). VA funded, non-VA funded and non-funded research proposals are reviewed and must be approved by the Research and Development (R&D) Committee and relevant R&D Subcommittees (Human Studies, Animal Use, and/or Biosafety) at each VAMC. Basic information on research projects approved by the VAMC Research and Development committee is transmitted to the RDIS, which tracks the life cycle of these projects.

This database is part of the National Medical Information System (NMIS). The National Health Care Practitioner Database (NHCPD) supports Veterans Health Administration Privacy Act requirements by segregating personal information about health care practitioners such as name and social security number from patient information recorded in the National Patient Care Database for Ambulatory Care Reporting and Primary Care Management Module.

VA's Managerial Cost Accounting System is the designated Managerial Cost Accounting (MCA) System of the Department of Veterans Affairs. This system is the Department's only means of complying with Public Laws (e.g., PL 101-576 - the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990) that mandate the use of a MCA system that can assign costs to the product level. MCA cost data is used at all levels of the VA for important functions, such as cost recovery (billing), budgeting and resource allocation. Additionally, the system contains a rich repository of clinical information which is used to promote a more proactive approach to the care of high risk (i.e., diabetes and acute coronary patients) and high cost patients. The data in MCA is also used to calculate and measure the productivity of physicians and other care providers.

ADR provides an authoritative data store for shared administrative, demographic, enrollment, and eligibility information which is managed as a corporate asset. This administrative database system offers mission-critical database support for all VA Medical 21st Century Core applications such as Enrollment Systems, Identity Management System, Community Care Program, Veterans's Choice program, President's Affordable Care Act project, Patient Advocacy Tracking System, Veterans 360, and others.

VA Community Care Comparison or VAC3 is a system for comparing Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospital system performance with regional and U.S. national benchmarks. This report includes key quality measures available on CMS Hospital Compare and top hospital recognition programs from reporting agencies of hospital quality. VAC3 data tables are updated every quarter.

Voluntary Service System (VSS) is a national-level application which replaced the site-based Voluntary Timekeeping System (VTK). VTK was used for many years at the Veterans Affairs Medical Centers to track and manage the hours of service contributed by volunteers and volunteer organizations. Consistency of data between sites was a problem and the process of compiling national VTK reports was slow and costly. Many steps were involved because national data was only consolidated once a month and it was usually out of sync. Improved data collection and reporting is now available since users interact directly with a centralized national database. Rehosted VSS uses .NET technology that replaced data transmissions between sites and the Austin Information Technology Center to produce the consolidated national reports. Direct access to data provides instantaneous updates and up-to-the-minute reporting for all users. Central Office administrators and Voluntary staff now have broader more reliable data for managing Volunteer Services.

The Functional Status and Outcome Database (FSOD) captures and tracks information about patient rehabilitative care throughout the VA. FSOD supports the entry of information from acute and sub-acute inpatient rehabilitation programs, as well as a broad range of outpatient rehabilitation programs. Outcome-based information including length of stay and cost is also tracked. Participating Veterans Affairs Medical Center staff enter information into FSOD on-line through a software program called VA FIMware (Functional Independence Measurement (FIM)). Users throughout the VA can access stored FSOD data through VA FIMware. Quarterly, FSOD data is transferred electronically to the Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation (UDSmr) server in Buffalo, New York. The UDSmr database contains a U.S. national roll-up of rehabilitative programs. Users include all VA personnel involved in rehabilitative care and the UDSmr.

The Home Based Primary Care (HBPC) database receives and compiles data from local Hospital Based Home Care (HBHC) sanctioned programs at Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) that run home care programs under the Home Based Primary Care program. The primary purpose is to provide HBPC management with case mix, case load, and other performance information. The HBPC information system is referred to as HBC at the VA Austin Information Technology Center and as HBHC at the local level. The HBHC automated a paper-based system of reporting home care episodes. When an admission form is completed, an episode is opened and input into HBHC for a potential home care patient. The patient is evaluated and accepted to or rejected from the program. When a patient leaves the program for any reason an episode is closed and a discharge form completed and input into HBHC. HBHC runs a nightly extract of information within the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture. Extractions include information on all Patient Care Encounters (PCEs) with the patient and home visits made by home care providers. Details of which provider(s) made the visit, the date, any diagnosis and any procedures performed are included. Each local application sends its data to the Austin HBC database on a monthly basis. A monthly report is prepared based on this information identifying the active cases at each VAMC. A more detailed quarterly report is produced that includes national comparisons among sites.