Act places restrictions on VA, DoD EHR funding

To prevent wasteful spending on Department of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs’ (VA) EHR systems, Congress has added funding restrictions to the 2014 Omnibus Appropriation Act.

The Act, approved on Jan. 15, also makes clear that the House VA and Defense appropriations committees’ goal is interoperability between the two agencies’ systems via common data standards, not an integrated system. To that end, Congress eliminated language in an earlier bill that called for a single record system to serve the DoD and VA.

“The committees want to be very clear with both departments: An interoperable record between the two departments is the chief end goal for Congress,” according to the bill.

The Act transfers $251.9 million that the VA originally intended to use to develop an integrated EHR to support development of an upgraded version of its Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA). It also provides $32.9 million for the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record, which includes benefits information.

Under the bill, VA cannot spend more than 25 percent of its VistA budget until it shares with Congress how it will comply with data standards defined by the Interagency Program Office (IPO). Congress also requires updates on interoperability testing between the systems.

The Defense section of the omnibus bill allows DoD Healthcare Management System Modernization to spend only 25 percent of its budget until it provides Congress with a budget for the full cost of the new EHR. The bill also reduced the overall procurement budget for the Defense Health Agency by $204.2 million.

The full text of the omnibus bill is here.