VA HSR&D Podcasts

Sam Edwards, MD, MPH, of the Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) in Portland OR, talks about his research studying care fragmentation among Veterans receiving home based primary care (HBPC). Care fragmentation - the dispersion of a patient’s care across clinicians and healthcare settings - is associated with increased Emergency Department visits and hospital admissions among medically complex patients.

Hildi Hagedorn, PhD, investigator with the Center for Care Delivery and Outcomes Research CCDOR in Minneapolis, MN, talks about her research focused on implementation of best-practice recommendations for the identification and treatment of substance use disorders (SUD). Dr. Hagedorn was the recipient of the 2020 HSR&D Health System Impact Award for her career-long body of work focused on increasing system-wide implementation of evidence-based treatments for Veterans with SUD.

Seppo Rinne, MD, PhD, BS of the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research (CHOIR) talks about his work with the EMPIRIC QUERI partnered evaluation. The mission of EMPIRIC QUERI is to improve VA’s electronic health record modernization (EHRM) by ensuring that it is informed by frontline clinician and staff experiences. EMPIRIC is identifying challenges and best practices to support clinicians and inform the nationwide Cerner rollout.

Heather Gilmartin, PhD, NP, investigator and nurse scientist at the Denver/Seattle Center of Innovation in Denver, Colorado discusses her HSR&D Career Development Award program work, which is focused on building supportive learning environments  VA’s cardiac catheter labs.

Dr. Kristin Mattocks conducts a wide-ranging interview with her friend and HSR&D colleague, Dr. Rani Elwy. Dr. Elwy shares insights into her long-running VA HSR&D research career, discusses turning failure into success, and looks at the two-way relationship between mentors and mentees.

Kristin Mattocks, PhD, MPH, is an investigator and Associate Chief of Staff for Research at the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System, Director of the HSR&D-funded Community Care Research, Evaluation, and Knowledge Center, and the Associate Dean for Veterans Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Rani Elwy, PhD, MS, is an investigator with the HSR&D-funded Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, and Director of the Implementation Science Core at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University.

Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) dissemination coordinator Diane Hanks talks with Dr. Joe Geraci, investigator and clinical psychologist at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, Bronx, New York. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Geraci is the co-Director of the Transitioning Servicemember/Veteran Suicide and Prevention Center, which is a joint effort between VISN 2 and VISN 17. Recently, Dr. Geraci partnered with QUERI to evaluate the effectiveness of the Transitioning Servicemember/Veteran Sponsorship initiative.

Dr. Geraci is a retired U.S. Army Infantry Lieutenant Colonel, having served for 20 years and been deployed as a combat leader with elite Special Operations/Ranger, Airborne, and Infantry units to Afghanistan four times since September 11, 2001.

Bryann DeBeer, PhD, of the Seattle-Denver Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care, talks about her work using social network analysis to understand the impact that COVID-19 enforced social distancing has had on Veterans’ mental health and suicide risk.

HSR&D investigator and director of the North Florida/South Georgia Geriatrics Research, Education, and Clinical Center Ron Shorr, MD, MS, and healthcare architect Gary Fischer with VA’s Construction and Facilities Unit, discuss the value of partnered research within the context of Dr. Shorr’s HSR&D-funded project, Nursing Unit Design and Hospital Falls.

In this episode, Dr. Christopher Rentsch, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Yale University, talks about a large-scale evaluation of the effectiveness of prophylactic anticoagulant therapy for the treatment of COVID-19.

Since the recording of this podcast, the largest trial to date, ACTIV-4, has found that initiating therapeutic anticoagulation compared to prophylactic anticoagulation provided additional benefit among patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Both Dr. Rentsch’s study and the ACTIV-4 study found benefit in noncritically ill patients yet not in critically ill patients.

In part one of a two-part conversation, VA geriatrician Jim Rudolph, MD, talks about his work to develop new COVID-19 safety and screening standards based on temperature readings among residents of VA Community Living Centers. In addition to his work as a VA clinician, Dr. Rudolph is the director of the HSR&D Center of Innovation for Long-term Services and Supports, in Providence, RI