“The ongoing electronic health records collaboration between the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Health Agency is laying the groundwork for improvements in patient care, as well as showing promising signs to help advance public health across the nation as a whole.”
“Representatives from the VA-Defense Department Joint Health Information Exchange noted the considerable progress that has already been made in the project’s implementation during a media roundtable last week.”
“’We’re live at 23 sites, we’ve got almost over 15,000 active users of the system,’ said Holly Joers, program executive officer at Defense Healthcare Management Systems.”
“The potential benefits of this consolidation appear manifold — not only will implementation of the newly launched Cerner platform allow for smoother continuity of care when a soldier retires from service and begins receiving care through VA, but also the accompanying IT modernization within the DOD as a whole will allow for better provision of care in the field…”
“The lead up to the implementation of the Cerner electronic health records system and joint information sharing between VA and DOD has encouraged a broader program of modernization across both agencies to ensure the most effective adoption of the new platform, leading to updates across the underlying IT infrastructure as well as reforms in the training process for civil servants employed by both agencies.”
“’We’ve learned infrastructure has to be ready to go absolutely has to be ready to go. You’re not going to run a state of the art solution on an antiquated system or an infrastructure that needs to be updated. You got to bring the infrastructure up so that has been solidified,’ said John Windom, executive director at the VA Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization. ‘We’ve also learned that the users have to be trained. This is absolutely about user adoption. I don’t care how good the technology is, if the users can’t effectively use it or efficiently use it to perform their duties, it’ll sit idly by in some corner and never be used, or they will resist using it…'” Read the full article here.
Source: DOD-VA Health Information Exchange Can Aid COVID-19 Vaccine, Opioid Crisis – By Adam Patterson, November 24, 2020. GovernmentCIO.
