Newsweek - USA (2020-03-20)

32 NEWSWEEK.COM MARCH 27, 2020

in cancer, where doctors use it to tell ahead of time

whether a patient will respond to a specific treatment.

In the U.S., only a tenth of cancer patients get

precision-medicine testing. At the VA, half of lung

cancer patients now get it, as do a quarter of those

with prostate cancer—the two most common

types of cancer among vets. Unlike most rural pa-

tients, who don’t have access to precision medicine,

vets who live in rural areas are getting tested at the

same rates as those near cities. The VA “telegenom-

ics” hub in Salt Lake City services the entire VA sys-

tem; any physician in the VA can access it on behalf

of a patient. “Now we’re working to provide rural

vets with access to experimental cancer drugs, too,”

says Michael Kelley, a physician who directs the

VA’s national oncology program. He notes the VA

has also been looking at bringing artificial intelli-

gence software to bear on analyzing vets’ tumors.

can be a mess by the time they come into my office.”
That’s why the VA’s video patients have 28 percent
fewer missed appointments than in-person patients.
The VA’s telehealth practices go beyond conve-
nience. Videoconferencing gives both patients and
their doctors fast access to advanced specialty con-
sults available in a handful of leading hospitals. “We
use virtual care to match patients to the best special-
ist for their needs across the entire system, wherever
they are,” says the VA’s Evans. “Just because you’re at
one of our smaller hospitals or clinics doesn’t mean
you can’t benefit from the resources you’d have if
you were at a top-notch medical center.”
That tele-specialty capability is one way that the
VA is moving to the forefront of so-called precision
medicine, an effort to develop treatments that are
custom-tailored to a patient’s genes and other char-
acteristics. Precision medicine is especially promising

“THIS ADMINISTRATION IS SETTING US

UP TO FAIL SO THEY CAN DISMANTLE VETERANS’

PREFERRED HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.”

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