“The Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization (FEHRM) program office, stood up last December to help guide more than $21 billion in joint efforts to modernize health records at the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, issued its interoperability strategy to Congress late last month, as required by the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).”
“Under the defense bill, the FEHRM took over for the long-established Interagency Program Office, which managed data exchange and cooperation between legacy DOD systems, notably Alta, and VA’s homegrown electronic health record system Vista. With DOD and VA spending billions to implement the Cerner Millennium electronic health record platform, there’s more at stake.”
“‘DOD and VA are continuing to drive toward more seamless care as patients navigate within and between the federal health care systems, most notably through the implementation of a single, common federal EHR,’ Dr. Neil Evans, former interim director of FHERM, wrote in the introduction to the strategy. (William Tinston, former program executive officer for Defense Healthcare Management Systems, now heads the FEHRM.)”
“… The strategy from the FEHRM offers a set of goals that are more about health outcomes and empowering patients than specific technological benchmarks. Congress will be looking to FEHRM for more actionable strategy with specific deliverables, but overseers are pleased with the effort…” Read the full article here.
Source: FEHRM releases interoperability strategy – By Adam Mazmanian, October 9, 2020. FCW.
