Last week, the Department of Defense in a letter to Congress said it has achieved electronic health record interoperability with the Department of Veterans Affairs, FCW reports (Mazmanian, FCW, 11/20).
Background
In February 2013, VA and DOD abandoned plans to create a joint, integrated EHR. Instead, DOD plans to purchase a commercial EHR system through Cerner, Leidos and Accenture Federal, while VA plans to improve its existing EHR.
Meanwhile, VA and DOD said they each would work toward interoperability with the other (iHealthBeat, 11/20).
In 2014, the National Defense Authorization Act mandated that DOD and VA verify that their systems are interoperable (FCW, 11/20).
However, a Government Accountability Office report released in August found several instances in which the departments missed key deadlines to make their systems more interoperable (iHealthBeat, 11/20).
Letter Details
In a Nov. 16 letter to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services, Veterans’ Affairs and Appropriations committees, Defense Undersecretary Frank Kendall certified that DOD has met its interoperability requirements under the NDAA.
He wrote, “With this letter, we are certifying that we have not merely met this requirement, but have gone even further to integrate data from other DOD systems, including inpatient, theater and pharmacy, into this process, thereby exceeding the NDAA’s requirements” (FCW, 11/20).
According to the Military Times, DOD met the congressional requirement using the Joint Legacy Viewer, which allows health care providers to view records from both agencies. Officials demonstrated the software before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee on Nov. 18 (Kime,Military Times, 11/20).
Software Details
According to Politico‘s “Morning eHealth,” the JLV platform contains various records from VA, DOD and private-practice providers (Allen et al., “Morning eHealth,” Politico, 11/20).
Using the software, health care providers can view a veteran’s entire health history, including information about his or her:
- Allergies;
- Health summaries;
- Immunizations; and
- Past vital signs (Konkel, Nextgov, 11/20).
Currently, more than 13,000 DOD and 22,000 VA clinicians and administrators have access to the platform (FCW, 11/20).
According to the Military Times, the system is set to undergo several upgrades over the next year to improve its interface, security and medical coding system. Officials could not provide information about the costs of the JLV program’s development and implementation (Military Times, 11/20).
A finished, fully interoperable version of the viewer will soon be rolled out for DOD clinicians. Meanwhile, David Waltman — a senior VA health IT adviser — said it should be ready for VA providers by the end of March
