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The Defense Department is making final preparations to start exchanging selected patient information with a private healthcare provider in Hampton Roads, Va., as part of the DOD's Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) community project.
The southeastern, Va., region, is home to thousands of active duty military and veterans seeking healthcare among DOD and private sector providers and is the second site of DOD's joint project with the Veterans Affairs Department to share electronic records in a complex services environment.
Starting July 30, DOD will be able to share patient emergency and blood work data with the Bon Secours Health System, a DOD purchased care provider, via the MedVirgina health information exchange, a Richmond, Va., based HIE.
At the same time, the VA's Portsmouth, Va., medical center will exchange health data with DOD and purchased care providers in the region, military health officials said at a June 11 briefing.
"When patients present themselves, we'll be able to prove that we can move their data around and that we can share a patient's information with Bon Secours and that we can share a patient's information as well with VA," said Col. Claude Hines, deputy program executive officer of innovation and delivery of DOD's Joint Medical Information Systems.
"The capability will be in place," said Hines.
Hines, who also . Following Hampton Roads, the next VLER community will be Spokane, Wash, in January 2011 and the Puget Sound region in July 2011, he said.
When it is completed, VLER is designed to carry all administrative and medical information of military service members from their induction through the remainder of their lives.
DOD and VA purchase a large portion of healthcare for military service members and veterans from private health facilities. While they share significant amounts of information about patient information held by most private providers systems has been unavailable to the DOD and VA providers.
The VA, Kaiser Permanente, and DOD started exchanging patient names and some emergency data as part of the first VLER project begun earlier this year in San Diego. But since Kaiser is not a DOD partner in the area, DOD did not use live patient data to test the exchange of information, Hines said.
In the Hampton Roads pilot, DOD, VA, Bon Secours and eventually other providers will increase the amount of data they share to include some hematology measurements from blood tests, a subset of lab data, Hines said.
The information is shared through the C32 document format for summarizing a patient's medical status, such as medications and allergies, using the Health Level 7 Continuity of Care standard.
"With each VLER pilot we want to go to more organizations and add more capabilities," Hines said.
Following Hampton Roads, the next VLER community will be Spokane, Wash, in January 2011 and the Puget Sound region in July 2011, he said.
The Defense Department is making final preparations to start exchanging selected patient information with a private healthcare provider in Hampton Roads, Va., as part of the DOD's Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) community project.
The southeastern, Va., region, is home to thousands of active duty military and veterans seeking healthcare among DOD and private sector providers and is the second site of DOD's joint project with the Veterans Affairs Department to share electronic records in a complex services environment.
Starting July 30, DOD will be able to share patient emergency and blood work data with the Bon Secours Health System, a DOD purchased care provider, via the MedVirgina health information exchange, a Richmond, Va., based HIE.
At the same time, the VA's Portsmouth, Va., medical center will exchange health data with DOD and purchased care providers in the region, military health officials said at a June 11 briefing.
"When patients present themselves, we'll be able to prove that we can move their data around and that we can share a patient's information with Bon Secours and that we can share a patient's information as well with VA," said Col. Claude Hines, deputy program executive officer of innovation and delivery of DOD's Joint Medical Information Systems.
"The capability will be in place," said Hines.
Hines, who also . Following Hampton Roads, the next VLER community will be Spokane, Wash, in January 2011 and the Puget Sound region in July 2011, he said.
When it is completed, VLER is designed to carry all administrative and medical information of military service members from their induction through the remainder of their lives.
