By Cheryl Pellerin and Army Sgt. 1st
Class Tyrone C. Marshall Jr.
American Forces Press Service
NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. – The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments
announced a milestone in their effort to combine their health records in what
will become the world’s largest electronic system by 2017, the secretaries of
both departments announced here today.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and VA
Secretary Eric K. Shinseki briefed reporters after a tour of the Capt. James A.
Lovell Federal Health Care Center, the nation's first fully integrated DOD-VA
medical facility treating service members, veterans, military retirees and
dependents.
“Over the past two days, as many of you
know, world leaders have gathered in Chicago to affirm our commitment to
finishing the job right in Afghanistan,” Panetta said. “This afternoon,
Secretary Shinseki and I are coming together to affirm what in many ways is an
equally important commitment: to care for and honor those who have protected
our nation by serving it in uniform.”
The center -- named for retired Navy
captain and former NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who was in the audience today --
amounts to a proving ground for the DOD-VA joint operating concept. It
incorporates facilities, services and resources from the North Chicago VA
Medical Center and the Naval Health Clinic Great Lakes.
“In response to a challenge issued [by President Barack Obama] three years ago, DOD and VA have been working steadily
to increase the amount of health information that's shared between our two
departments,” Panetta said.
What Obama envisioned in 2009 was an
initiative called the virtual lifetime electronic record, or VLER, for the
future of electronic health data sharing. Since that time, Panetta said, the
centerpiece of the DOD-VA effort has been an effort to build an integrated
electronic health record for service members and veterans that can be accessed
at any DOD and VA medical facility.
Such an integrated electronic health
record, or iEHR, is “one that is open in architecture and nonproprietary in
design to expand information sharing, eliminate gaps between our two robust
health care systems,” Shinseki said.
“This is key to seamlessness, critical
to enhancing quality of health care, and essential to controlling costs,” he
added.
“Today,” Panetta said, “I want to affirm
that we are fully committed to putting this system, which will be the world's
largest electronic health record system, in place across the nation in 2017.”
The project’s first milestone will come
in 2014, the defense secretary said. At that time, the departments will field
initial operating capabilities of the integrated electronic health record at
test sites in San Antonio and in Hampton Roads, Va., where DOD and the VA
provide medical care to thousands of service members and veterans.
The iEHR will unify the departments’
now-separate legacy electronic health records systems into a common, secure
system that makes service members’ and veterans’ health information available
to them throughout their lifetimes.
During a media roundtable held today,
experts from DOD and VA explained what a difference the new joint electronic
health records could mean in someone’s daily life.
“If a service member is seen in a DOD
hospital and the next week has an appointment in a VA hospital, you’d like all
of that information to be available to the VA doctor, just like they’re being
seen in the same hospital,” Roger Baker, VA assistant secretary for information
and technology, told reporters.
“That really is our concept here,” he
said, adding that something interesting happened during the first pilot test of
a nationwide health information network.
As the first health record was shared
between a VA facility and a private-sector facility, he said, the
private-sector doctor said, “I didn’t know the patient had that allergy.”
“It was an allergy the VA knew about,
but that the patient hadn’t told his private-sector doctor about, and clearly
those kinds of allergies can have a tremendous impact on quality of care,”
Baker said. “That ability to have a more comprehensive record can do
life-saving things, frankly.”
In 2014, when the systems are rolled out
in San Antonio and Hampton Roads, Baker explained, records for patients in the
VA before then will be as they were.
“If you’ve recently moved from active
service into veteran status,” he added, “the most important thing you will
notice is that your VA doctor has a lot more access to information about your
previous medical care in DOD than he or she may have had in the past.”
Probably more importantly, he said,
doctors will see that information side by side with other treatment the patient
may have had in the VA system, so they’ll have a more complete view of the
patient’s entire medical history.
Beth McGrath, a DOD deputy chief
management officer, said that in Hampton Roads and San Antonio in the 2014 time
frame, “the clinical capabilities we’re deploying first are focused on
laboratory and immunizations.”
Both experts said the Defense Department
has sufficient funding in its budget for the effort.
At the news conference, Panetta said
implementing and testing the new system over a period of years “will help us
make sure that we are doing it right and that we have time to adjust based on
experience in the field.”
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