Welcome To Vietnam Veterans of America

Veteran's Health Care

From our VHC friends at the Partnership for Safe Medicines

DRUG SAFETY WARNING: A Novo Nordisk product previously reported as stolen in North Carolina has resurfaced recently at a medical center in Houston. The FDA has notified patients and healthcare professionals that some stolen vials of the long-acting insulin Levemir made by Novo Nordisk Inc. are being sold in the U.S. market, may not have been stored and handled properly, and may be dangerous for patients to use. The agency is advising patients who use Levemir insulin to: Check your personal supply of insulin to determine if you have Levemir insulin from one of the following lots: XZF0036, XZF0037, and XZF0038. Do not use your Levemir insulin if it is from one of these lots. Contact the Novo Nordisk Customer Care Center at 1-800-727-6500 for what to do with vials from these lots or if you have any other questions.

EVALUATION SURVEY ANNOUNCED

The Rand Corporation, an independent research corporation with no affiliation to the VA, announced that callers will be contacting approximately 5,800 veterans to ask them some questions about their experiences using Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) mental health care. By mental health care they mean help with problems, with relationships or emotions, counseling, treatment for drug or alcohol use, or help with emotional problems or mental illness. If you are called, you do not have to take part if you do not want to. Whether or not you decide to take part in this interview will not affect any VA services you receive now and will not affect your eligibility for VA services in the future. If you are called and choose to participate, the phone interview will take about 25 to 30 minutes, and RAND will send you a check for $10.00 in appreciation of your time. Any information you provide will be confidential, and RAND will not connect your name to the information that you give.

NOTE: this study’s I.R.B. documentation has been filed and reviewed by VVA’s I.R.B. research officer and judged to be in compliance with all applicable human subjects research guidelines.

amd update

The Macular Degeneration Partnership is a coalition of patients, families, researchers, clinicians and leaders in the fields of vision and aging. Our mission is to create an unprecedented collaboration among all these stakeholders to disseminate information about AMD, provide support to patients and marshal resources for a cure.

Some of the topics in the May 2008 update include:

NeoVista Presents Data on Radiation Trial
Gene Therapy Success
Sunset - A Macular Journey
Read the AMD Update

Veterans health care COMMITTEE REPORT
as reported in THE VVA Veteran

Maintaining Your Medical Records

BY PATRICIA BESSIGANO, CHAIR

VVA members are now either in our retirement years or quickly approaching them. One of the challenges facing Veterans Service Officers is the filing of new claims for Vietnam veterans without proper medical evidence. If veterans have not kept copies of their records, it can be virtually impossible to document the progress of an illness, especially if they have received medical care in the private sector.

Private physicians are required to maintain medical records for seven years. Many keep them at least ten years. However, record storage beyond that often becomes cumbersome and those records are destroyed. The opportunity for the patient to obtain those records is then lost, and the opportunity to document an illness also is lost. Also, private physicians have not always documented whether their patients have served in the military or if they were exposed to any hazardous chemicals or materials. They also have not always documented illnesses or injuries that occurred during a veteran’s service.

One of the goals of the Health Care Committee is to educate returning veterans about maintenance of their medical records as they progress in life and to educate private physicians about taking a complete and accurate military medical history.

A sample medical history form will be available on the VVA Health Care Committee web page. The new prostate and diabetes brochures are also available on the VVA website.