UNDERSTANDING THE VA'S ELECTRONIC MILITARY HEALTH RECORD SYSTEM
The VA has been doing many things to make the lives of service members easier, including upgrading and making the military health record system better and more accessible. Despite their efforts, there are still some setbacks that lawmakers grew concerned about. The VA launched the new EHR in 2020, a significant milestone in Veteran care. This new record system is helping improve the overall experience for Vets by making connecting to medical centers and clinics easier. It will also allow medical professionals to easily access the complete medical history of a Veteran in one location without manually tracking down their information, such as through pharmacy or lab records. With this great innovation, the department is continually upgrading its system, but will it need more people and a bigger budget to operate it?
What Does the Military Health Record Do?
This new innovation creates an all-in-one medical record system for Vets, service members, and their families. It aims to focus on safety, quality, and patient outcomes to help advance business objectives and become a high-reliability organization. The new EHR even enhances health, improves safety, and increases readiness. It also standardizes the processes of clinics and businesses across services, and it enables beneficiaries to have full access to their health care.With its new upgrade, military members can get portal access 24/7 without any restrictions. Additionally, members can easily make appointments and have conversations with their care team. Aside from better management and communication, the patient portal can also be used to request medicine refills from the military pharmacy.
Issues Faced by the New Military Health Record
The launch of the new electronic health record system has raised some eyebrows among lawmakers as they have some concerns about it. However, as per the officials of the VA, the rollout was successful and was promising without any critical patient safety incidents. But, the downside is that it needs around 200 new staff members to support the program and 800 temporary workers. This includes experienced users from the treatment facilities of the military. With this issue, experts are concerned about the viability and costs of the new system as it may use more funds. With the concerns, the full rollout has been put on hold since April 2023. This is because there are some issues regarding user-friendliness, pharmacy components, and patient safety. Testing the waters, the new rollout was in Lovell, a VA and Defense Department facility. This was to check program improvements. But, lawmakers wonder if the VA can sustain it if they include the other sites. According to Rep. Matt Rosendale, if the manpower is not available, this rollout can be a huge disaster. The department's ability to solve the problem is good, but the issue is still there. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida also showed dismay at the considerable workforce demand in order to make things go smoothly with the new military health record system, as it might impact the budget of the VA. McCormick even added that hiring more people to support the new rollout will limit their ability to fill other vacancies. This can even lead to a catastrophic effect in terms of Vets accessing their VA health care, and it might lead to further development of community care.
The Health Information Technology
Oracle Cerner is a multi-provider of health information technology partnering with the VA. They were awarded a $10 billion contract, which was later revised to $16.1 billion in May 2018. This promises to ensure that Vets will have a digital medical record for the rest of their lives. The system that Cerner is using is also known as the MHS Genesis. Surprisingly, it is being used by over 50 military treatment facilities of the Defense Department. At the same time, the VA's version of the technology is Millennium. It is widely in use at clinics and medical centers in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio. However, the VA had to stop working with Millennium because they found some issues with the system; this prompted them to work with Oracle, followed by the purchase of Cerner in 2021, which aims to improve operations and streamline the system. During the hearing, acting program executive director Dr. Neil Evans mentioned that the deployment of the new system at Lovell went well. While it saw a 50% reduction in outpatient appointments and care, it is now working at 80%.Still, lawmakers are not 100% confident in the new military health record system. They are more concerned about the cost. Even though Oracle mentioned that it would not exceed $16 billion, there would be an increase in manpower.Related reads: