Dive Brief:

• Coordinated Care Oklahoma is the state's largest health information exchange and is being touted as the first one partnered with Cerner to connect with the U.S. Department of Defense, reports Healthcare IT News.  
• Military personnel stationed at bases throughout Oklahoma can now have their EHRs made available to subscribers on CCO's health information exchange, which spans over five states. 
• Coordination and implementation of the service was done through a team of members from CCO, Cerner, Browersoft, and Fort Sill, according to the press release. 

Dive Insight:

Competition between electronic health record vendors over and which one can acquire the most hospital contracts can be fairly cut-throat. Last January, Healthcare Dive listed both Cerner and vendor that wins the DoD contract on the list of the 4 IT vendors industry stakeholders ought to be looking out for in 2015. Cerner technology is only gaining momentum now that Coordinated Care Oklahoma, the largest health information exchange in the state, has connectd with the DoD. 

With the partnership, military personnel stationed at bases in Oklahoma will be able to have their health records available at any of the providers that subscribe to CCO's exchange. CCO's chief administrative officer, Brian Yeaman, said in a press release that this service will assure DoD personnel will be able to access their records when needed. 

"We have a proven ability to provide accurate, up-to-date, secure and reliable health records to our subscribers at Coordinated Care Oklahoma. Up until this point, military personnel and their families were covered as it pertains to electronic health records in a sort of duplicate system and then only within base medical installations."

CCO's health information exchange is a joint venture between Cerner technology and Browsersoft and is a model that is based on giving subscribers pressed for time their records with ease of use.