Congress raps DOD-VA health integration failures

Congressional lawmakers have slammed the sluggish progress of those charged with making the electronic health records of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs interoperable.

The criticism came in a report accompanying the Defense appropriations bill signed by President Obama on Monday. Both departments "have common functions that should result in the development of common technology solutions and architecture," the report said.

"Unfortunately, it appears that both departments are not sufficiently coordinating their efforts."

The report identified lab work, pharmacy orders, digital radiology transmittal, third-party collections, and patient appointment scheduling as areas which should involve joint business processes.

The lawmakers recognized that both departments "are continuing to work on interoperability between their current systems and improving the transmittal of medical records from one system to another. However, there is significant concern that the necessary efforts being made to jointly develop the required future systems are inadequate."

In November 2008, DoD and VA announced they would be migrating their electronic health systems to a common service-oriented architecture in order to enhance the interoperability of their outpatient clinical data and to develop joint capabilities.

The report directed the Joint Executive Council and the Health Executive Council, both DoD/VA units working on interoperability, to report to the House and Senate appropriations committees by January 11, 2010 "on a complete and thorough review of the technology requirements of each department." The report is to include justifications for each technology requirement that cannot be developed jointly.

The fiscal year 2010 Defense Authorization Act, which President Obama signed on Oct. 28, prevents the Military Health System from using $192.6 million in its fiscal 2010 health IT budget until DoD meets interoperability requirements.