By Joseph Goedert
President Obama has announced the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs will create a joint "virtual" electronic health record to enable access to patient data held in the departments' disparate information systems.
Department officials have been discussing how to improve the flow of information between DOD's AHLTA system and VA's VistA system. The President's announcement makes official the decision to move forward.
According to the White House, the plan is built around a "seamless system of integration" that would streamline the transition of health care records between DOD and the VA. "Both departments will work together to define and build a system that will ultimately contain administrative and medical information from the day an individual enters military service throughout their military career, and after they leave the military," according to a White House statement.
One concept discussed by DOD and the VA calls for uniform registration to enroll service members in a single Defense-VA management system when they join the military, according to American Forces Press Service. The system would have one component for personnel files and another component for medical files.
This article can also be found at HealthDataManagement.com.
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