“A House hearing this week exposed a major roadblock to the $16 billion plan to put in place a single electronic health record system for the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. And it has nothing to do with technological challenges.”
“The VA and Pentagon have not yet begun to address old bureaucratic turf wars on data sharing that scuttled past efforts to let veterans and doctors have access to their entire health records, according to testimony Wednesday by VA officials.”
“Even if the immensely complicated programming, infrastructure and software obstacles to data sharing can be overcome, veterans would still have to make separate requests to the VA and DoD for their complete health records under existing rules and laws, the officials said.”
“‘If a patient needs to go to both the VA and DoD to get their complete record, then we’re not meeting the underlying goal of this whole project,’ Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nevada, chairwoman of the House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on technology modernization, told a panel of VA officials.”
“Based on their testimony, Lee said she is unsure where the VA stands on solving the jurisdictional problems involving the data. The officials themselves seemed unsure…”
“The bottom line is that Congress might have to write new laws to get past the old rules blocking data sharing if the VA and DoD can’t come to an agreement, said John Windom, executive director of OEHRM, in response to Lee’s offer to consider legislative action…” Read the full article here.
Source: Even if All Goes Right with Overhaul, Veterans Still Face a Health Records Mess – By Richard Sisk, November 22, 2019. Military.com.
