Now serving as the Department of Defense lead in the effort to implement a comprehensive federal electronic health record, Joers sees her tenure at the FEHRM as essential to understanding how the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense can work together to transition to a single EHR.
As of June 2022, Joers and her team have transitioned 74 of 138 military hospitals and clinic commands to the new EHR with approximately 114,000 health care providers nationwide. DOD’s deployment effort is at its peak, and the team plans to complete deployment to all military hospitals and clinics by the end of calendar year 2023…
Q: How do you collaborate with your VA partners?
A: Our team thinks about how we collaborate from the lowest working level up to the leadership level when making day-to-day management decisions. With every decision we [DOD] make, we understand that it is not a sole decision. We constantly think about what the impact is for others using the system and vice versa. For example, at the executive level, there are recurring touchpoints on a regular basis and ad hoc phone calls. At times, Bill Tinston, the director of the FEHRM, will call me to say, “Hey, we have a common challenge or opportunity we want to talk about,” and we’ll get on the phone about it. The entire spectrum of operations is taken into consideration…
