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Senior lawmakers traveled from Capitol Hill on Thursday to the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters to hear firsthand why the agency is threatening to shut down some hospitals next month if Congress does not address a $2.5 billion shortfall. The visit by the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate committees that oversee veterans care was the agency’s latest effort to step up pressure on Congress to fill a $3 billion hole in its budget before the August recess. The lawmakers attended a daily meeting of agency staff that is trying to manage an explosion in demand for health care. (Rein, 7/17)

The Pentagon will announce the winner of a highly sought after contract to modernize the military’s electronic health records by the end of this month – a decision with big implications both for the military and for Kansas City-based Cerner Corp. Cerner, a health information technology company and one of the largest and fastest-growing employers in the Kansas City region, is among three finalists for a 10-year, multibillion-dollar contract. (Wise and Stafford, 7/16)

The nursing home and domiciliary at Lake Baldwin VA have been sitting empty or serving as temporary homes for different services since its residents were transferred to the new Lake Nona campus last year, and U.S. Rep. John Mica wants to see them full and functioning again. The two buildings sit adjacent to the four-story Lake Baldwin hospital – a former Navy hospital – and can house about 100 elderly and 60 homeless veterans, "but everything takes time," said Mica during a recent tour of the campus along with VA's medical director and an entourage of about half-a-dozen. "We have to deal with bureaucracy and VA is very slow," said Mica, R-Winter Park. While services have been opening up in Lake Nona, parts of Lake Baldwin have been acting as temporary staging areas, but the five-year plan is for it to become the hub for veterans' basic medical care. (Miller, 7/16)