New Bill Demands Increased VA, DOD Collaboration
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) July 30, 2013 -- The Federal Savings Bank, an institution specialized in veteran loans have been telling its prospective mortgage applicants of a bill that effects VA's. Members of Congress as well as the Senate have introduced new and modified proposals that call for greater transparency between the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs when it comes to patients' electronic health records.
FierceEMR reported a bipartisan bill called The Servicemember's Electronic Health Record Act of 2013, or S. 1296, introduced by Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, establishes specific deadlines for the VA and DOD to attain seamless integration, information sharing and downloading regarding the electronic health records of their veteran patients. In order to achieve this, the bill modifies the existing Wounded Warrior's Act and encourages both agencies to consider future data patient data storage on the cloud for centralized access. The bill has since been directed to the Committee of Veterans Affairs.
Not one, but two bills
In addition to Senator Nelson's bill, another very similarly worded bill has been recently introduced to Congress by Representative Christopher Gibson, a New York Republican, called The 21st Century Health Care for Heroes Act (H. 2590). With slight changes to the Senate bill, Gibson's bill already has garnered the support of 44 co-sponsors and has been referred to the House Armed Services and Veterans Affairs Committees for review.
Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, said that despite the insistence of Congress to ensure interoperability between the two agencies, both the VA and the DOD have experienced difficulty working together. The VA has had an especially hard time obtaining records for persons from when they actively served in the military.
The content of Gibson's bill
According to H. 2590, both agencies would have a maximum of 180 days from the bill's enactment to create an authoritative health data source. In addition to that, they have a year to achieve seamless integration of personal health records, complete upgrades to their graphical interface, standardize data to facilitate real-time information migration and make available Blue Button health record downloads accessible to all military patients in both the VA and the DOD.
This proposal comes as a legislative reaction to Eric Shinseki's plans to modify its VistA EHR system to interact with the DOD platform. However, this plan came under heavy criticism. Subsequently, VA and DOD officials discussed the development of a system that exchanges standard health data instead of an EHR at a hearing between the Veterans Affairs Committee and the House Armed Services Committee.
The development of a joint EHR system has historically experienced setbacks. Despite political blowback and criticism, the idea of a joint EHR was shot down in February. However, the House National Defense Authorization Act was beefed up with an amendment calling for increased oversight of an iEHR option.
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The Perfect Mortgage Experience, The Federal Savings Bank, https://www.thefederalsavingsbank.com, 855-686-3883, [email protected]
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