Transparency for Vets

The transparency thing touted by President Obama in his first full day in office evidently does not apply to all patient safety alerts issued by the Veterans Affairs Department.

In fact, the alert page of VA's National Center for Patient Safety makes it clear that the list of alerts posted on the site "is not complete."

I guess this means that the department does not post alerts of wide public interest -- such as the one I reported on Thursday thanks to an alert leaked to me, which detailed a software glitch that resulted in VA clinicians getting bum data when they accessed patient data in Defense Department electronic health record systems.

Since next week is National Patient Safety Awareness Week, I suggest VA honor the occasion by making a decision to post all patient safety alerts online.