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Supporting Suicide Prevention Through Outpatient Care with DSS
The DSS Iconic Data PCM HRO Suicide Prevention Manager has been renamed Outpatient Care with Suicide Prevention, reflecting its critical role in helping the VA strengthen care excellence at the front lines for at-risk Veterans.
Each September, Suicide Prevention Month serves as a powerful reminder of the urgent need to raise awareness and drive meaningful action. Within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), reducing Veteran suicide is the highest clinical priority, with nearly 17 Veterans lost each day according to the VA’s 2024 Suicide Prevention Annual Report.
To support this mission, DSS has renamed the Iconic Data PCM HRO Suicide Prevention Manager to Outpatient Care with Suicide Prevention. This repositioning underscores the VA’s commitment that suicide prevention is not the work of a single team, but a responsibility shared across all outpatient clinics.
By providing real-time situational awareness, task management, and data-driven insights, the solution helps frontline teams streamline the process of determining which Veterans have screening due, so critical screening is done methodically and never missed. It also helps ensure timely follow up on positive suicide screens, powers improved continuity of care and reduces the risk of missed interventions.
Suicide Prevention—A Responsibility Shared by All
Suicide prevention is not the responsibility of a single team within the VA. While suicide prevention coordinators and case managers play an important role, much of critical work happens at the clinic level—where frontline providers and staff conduct screenings, follow up on positive results, and ensure Veterans receive timely care. VA clinics with access to the Outpatient with Suicide Prevention platform have found they can dramatically accelerate compliance with VA Directives, turning standards into consistent practice.
Effective suicide prevention requires engagement from every outpatient clinic and service line, making it a shared responsibility across the VA health care system—this relaunch of Suicide Prevention Manager recognizes and aligns with this reality.
“Our message is that suicide prevention is everybody’s responsibility at the VA,” said David LaBorde, M.D., President and CEO of Iconic Data. “Our platform is now deployed at several VA Medical Centers, where it helps outpatient clinics consistently deliver excellence in suicide prevention care. It’s been exciting to see facilities not only improve but also sustain top performance month after month by leveraging this VA information system integrated platform.”
The solution equips outpatient clinics—from primary care and medical subspecialties to surgical clinics and audiology—with dashboards that not only flag suicide screening requirements and ensure timely follow-up of positive screens in real-time, but also provide essential care coordination and pre-visit scrubbing capabilities that save time and improve the care their clinics deliver—capabilities that are essential for high-reliability organizations (HROs), where consistency, proactive intervention, and sustained performance directly translate into better patient outcomes and safer systems of care.
By consolidating this information into a single view, staff no longer need to dig through dozens of charts or rely on fragmented spreadsheets. Instead, they can see exactly which patients need action and when, reducing the risk of missed opportunities to intervene.
Driving Real-Time Situational Awareness
Outpatient Care with Suicide Prevention replaces manual and paper-based processes with a digital system that provides visibility across an entire caseload. Performance measures and care priorities are surfaced in one place, so staff can prepare for upcoming visits, identify Veterans at-risk, and assign tasks that ensure follow-up is completed on time. Push notifications further enhance this awareness by alerting staff to critical issues such as positive suicide screens or overdue safety plan reviews.
This situational awareness is more than a convenience. It can be lifesaving. By ensuring that no positive screen falls through the cracks and by providing real-time insight that helps Medical Centers consistently comply with the timely intervention standards required by VA Directives, the solution directly supports the VA’s commitment to reduce Veteran suicide.
Agenic Rules-Based Artificial Intelligence (AI): Insight at the Right Time
As dashboards become more prevalent, outpatient teams face overload—too many screens to monitor, too little time. Outpatient Care with Suicide Prevention’s Agenic, rules-based AI provides automated 24/7 monitoring in the background, detects critical gaps—such as positive suicide screens without timely follow-up—and pushes alerts directly to the staff members responsible for that Veteran’s care. By detethering clinicians and managers from constant dashboard monitoring, the system acknowledges the realities of busy clinic settings, recognizes human limits, and amplifies effectiveness. The result: fewer missed insights, more timely interventions, and stronger suicide prevention efforts—delivering safer, more reliable care for Veterans.
Supporting the VA’s High Reliability Organization Journey
The VA’s journey toward becoming an HRO requires embedding safety and reliability into every clinical workflow. Outpatient Care with Suicide Prevention advances this goal by standardizing processes across outpatient clinics, reducing the risk of human error, and giving leaders real-time visibility into team performance on suicide prevention and other key metrics.
“With this platform, sites have been able to save more than 80 percent of the time it previously took to manage patient record flags, ensure follow up of positive screens, and carry out other suicide prevention initiative related tasks,” added Dr. LaBorde. “By consolidating fragmented workflows into a single, easy-to-use system, teams are able to focus less on administrative tasks and more on providing Veterans care.”
A Proven Partner in Suicide Prevention
DSS is a longstanding partner to VA designing solutions that align with its mission and meet the unique needs of Veterans. Outpatient Care with Suicide Prevention builds on this history of innovation and impact, ensuring that every Veteran visit is an opportunity to screen, follow up, and connect at-risk individuals to the care they need.
Suicide prevention cannot be left to a single program or team. It requires systems that empower every clinician across the VA to recognize risks, act quickly, and sustain continuity of care. With Outpatient Care with Suicide Prevention, DSS and Iconic Data are proud to help VA transform its highest clinical priority into consistent, everyday action.
To learn more about how Outpatient Care with Suicide Prevention supports the VA’s mission during Suicide Prevention Month and beyond, contact DSS today.