“I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.” – John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)
As scenes of devastation from the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 continue to play on the world’s media outlets, the precarious reality of man’s existence on this planet, in the face of natural forces, is all too obvious.

WASHINGTON—A study published in the April issue of Health Affairs found that medical errors cost the United States more than $17 billion a year. And, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, medical errors and near miss events, i.e. any process or error that could have resulted in harm if it had not been caught, are responsible for injury to as many as one out of every 25 hospital patients.

WASHINGTON—Cancer organizations were pleased that funding was not reduced for the peer-reviewed prostate, breast and ovarian cancer programs in DoD’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) in the FY 2011 Defense budget.

PITTSBURGH—In 2000, if you were a patient at the Pittsburgh VAMC and were found to have a lung nodule, it took an average of six weeks to be evaluated for lung cancer. With the possibility of being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease hanging over your head, those six weeks could seem like an eternity.

WASHINGTON—In 2005, VA initiated a Colon Cancer Care Collaborative (C4) to help improve the timeliness of follow-up after positive fecal blood occult tests (FOBT). The initiative was in reaction to studies released at the time showing considerable delays between screening and follow-up, some as long as six months to a year.

WASHINGTON—If there is one fact that Marianne Elliott, chair of the U.S. Military Cancer Institute (USMCI) Institutional Review Board (IRB), wants investigators to know, it is that the USMCI’s new cancer research review board is “open for business.”

WASHINGTON—With a number of conflicting studies over the last five years looking at the effect of delays between positive colon cancer screenings and the subsequent colonoscopy that could confirm a diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC), VA researchers have struggled to determine exactly how a holdup of care effects outcomes.

WASHINGTON—Screening for colorectal cancer traditionally has been done on a per-visit basis at the VA. A patient comes in and, based on the physician’s recommendation, undergoes a test for the disease.

PORTLAND, OR—Vietnam-era veterans exposed to Agent Orange are almost 50% more likely to develop prostate cancer than unexposed veterans, making exposure to the defoliate a higher risk factor than age and on par with family history for veterans, according to recent research.

WASHINGTON—Despite significant efforts by DoD and VA to revamp the disability evaluation process, the new system remains “complex and adversarial,” the top Army doctor told a congressional subcommittee.