Information Technology: Challenges Remain for VA's Sharing of Electronic Health Records with DOD

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For over a decade, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been engaged in efforts to improve their ability to share electronic health information. These efforts are vital for making patient information readily available to health care providers in both departments, reducing medical errors, and streamlining administrative functions. In addition, Congress has mandated that VA and DOD jointly develop and implement, by September 30, 2009, electronic health record systems or capabilities that are fully interoperable and compliant with applicable federal interoperability standards. (Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.) The experience of VA and DOD in this area is also relevant to broader efforts to advance the nationwide use of health information technology (IT) in both the public and private health care sectors--a goal of both current and past administrations. In this statement, GAO describes VA's and DOD's achievements and challenges in developing interoperable electronic health records, including brief comments on how these apply to the broader national health IT effort.