Diffusion Marketplace

Veterans Health Administration, Center for Innovation, Diffusion of Excellence

The Challenge

The Veterans Administration (VA) provides first-class care to over 9 million veterans every year at 172 VA Medical Centers and 1,069 Outpatient clinics. It’s the largest integrated healthcare system in the country.

Most of the centers in that massive system are managed regionally or individually. That lack of central coordination allows these centers the autonomy to best meet the needs of veterans in their region.

However, there’s a downside. One center might develop an exciting innovation in their internal processes or patient care that could benefit millions of veterans across the United States. But with their decentralized organization, there’s no built-in way to share those innovations. Great ideas may get stuck in one region or even one individual center.

The Solution

In collaboration with the Veterans Health Administration, we built the Diffusion Marketplace, a centralized hub that allows individual VA centers to share their innovations with each other. Now VA centers across the country can learn about and adopt these new best practices, saving taxpayer money and improving care for veterans.