Dive Brief:
- A new bill (H.R. 2029) recently passed by the Senate details funding requirements for the Department of Veterans Affairs' plans to improve its EHR and interoperability with the Department of Defense's system.
- The VA will be required to submit a budget proposal to Congress for federal funding of health IT development and a budget increase request to Congress before expanding or reducing the department's EHR project by more than $1 million.
- The bill also requires the VA to submit plans for EHR and health IT implementation, as well as actual costs of EHR implementation; EHR functionality changes; implementation deadlines and progress on meeting them; progress on establishing EHR interoperability; status of EHR implementation; and tools needed to implement the EHR.
Dive Insight:
The VA will also be required to submit EHR interoperability information, including baseline measurements associated with interoperability, the VA and DOD's definition of interoperability for EHR systems, metrics used to measure interoperability, and milestones and a timeline for achieving interoperability.
Previous efforts to create an integrated EHR for the VA and DOD have been intermittent. The agencies abandoned plans to create a joint EHR in February 2013 and the DOD plans to purchase a commercial EHR system through Cerner, Accenture and Leidos (a contract worth $4.33 billion as reported by Healthcare Dive).
The VA plans to improve its existing EHR. In addition, a GAO report from last August found both agencies missed key deadlines to make their systems more interoperable.