Bill requires DoD, VA to establish EHR plan

The FY 2014 defense authorization bill, endorsed by the House and Senate, is calling for the Departments of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to establish either a single EHR or build interoperability between their EHR systems.

In language of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, the agencies have until the end of January to provide Congress with “a detailed plan for the oversight and execution of the interoperable EHR with an integrated display of data, or a single EHR.” If not, they will be unable to spend more than 25 percent of the estimated $344 million needed and also they will have to notify military and veterans committees of project expenditures exceeding $5 million.

“It is the sense of Congress that the secretary of defense and the secretary of veterans affairs have failed to implement a solution that allows for seamless electronic sharing of medical healthcare data; and despite the significant amount of information shared between the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs, most of the information shared as of the date of the enactment of this act is not standardized or available in real time to support all clinical decisions,” according to the bill.

The DoD and VA will have until the end of 2016 to actually implement the EHR system, which, “where practical,” should use “modern, open-architecture frameworks that use computable data mapped to national standards to make data available for determining medical trends and for enhanced clinician decision support.”

View the bill here.