The $43M Veterans Affairs simulation hospital where doctors pilot new tech

This makes a lot of sense to me. In software development, it's standard to have a testing environment, rather than rolling new code out directly to prod. ("Prod" in this case would be VA hospitals serving real patients.)

A laboratory for testing hospital scale operations offline seems like an obviously good idea to me. I wonder if there are others.

As a victim of the veterans administration health care system let me just reinforce all the bad stereotypes and horror stories about it. It’s so much worse than you even hear about.

My primary care doctor was basically zoned out every visit and almost all the staff were impossible to communicate with with no desire to try. Simply trying to get someone on the phone that has the ability to do anything was a joke.

You know the hospital scene in idiocracy? We’re like three iterations away from that at this point, and this BS pilot program is exactly how we get there