VA and Defense will consider several options for single electronic health record

The Defense and Veterans Affairs Departments should consider a number of options before they develop a single electronic health record, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker said at a media briefing Thursday.

Baker told lawmakers at a hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee last week that the two departments are close to reaching an agreement on a single electronic record. On Thursday, he said options under consideration include the Defense Department's AHLTA system and VA's Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, known as VistA, as well as commercial electronic health records systems.

He said he expected a decision by late March.

Whether or not VA and Defense reach an agreement on a single electronic health record, Baker said the department needs to update the decades old VistA, adding there are some "great" private sector technologies he would like to see incorporated into VistA.

There are literally hundreds of people in Defense and VA working on the single health record project. Baker characterized the level of cooperation between the two departments as "absolutely wonderful." The goal is to develop a new electronic health record "as jointly as possible," he said.

Teams from the two departments are working on the building blocks of a single health record, including data standards and common applications, Baker said. He also acknowledged, as reported Tuesday by Nextgov, Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the driving force behind the single electronic record in Defense.

If the two departments reach agreement on a singe electronic health record, it would be the largest in the world, serving 15.8 million patients -- 9.6 active-duty service members, retirees and their families in the Defense system and 6.2 million veterans in the VA system.