The Veterans Affairs Department is looking at how it can incorporate non-VA commercial Web tools that its physicians sometimes use to help them handle patient loads, which may require it loosening strict policies on the use of such applications.
Physicians and residents from medical schools who deliver care at VA and other hospitals access web sites outside of the VA network to enter notes about their patients' care so they won't forget the details, according to Roger Baker, the VA's chief information officer.
The physicians do not transmit any information from VA systems.
Although VA provides similar tools, "what's becoming clear to us is that, in today's very mobile world, our tools aren't exactly what our doctors need," Baker said, speaking with reporters Sept. 17 about VA's monthly report to Congress about potential data breaches.
What the VA has to avoid is becoming a white elephant to residents from top medical schools who practice at VA hospitals and "are critical in providing care," he said.
"We have to remain the place they look forward to coming to work," he said. "We have to figure out how to incorporate things rather than trying to have something (ourselves) that is close to what these very innovative tool providers are doing."
The physicians frequently work in other hospitals during the course of a day and may have to discuss a VA patient with another provider who is delivering care. In each incident, the notes were password protected, but Baker said he was examining the information stored in them for any privacy issue.
VA noted nine incidents among the potential data breaches in the report to Congress, including one in New York where physicians and residents logged into an application from an external Web site, which violates VA's information security policy.
While Baker said he was not announcing any policy changes yet, it's an example where VA must balance patient care and information protection.
"Our primary focus has to be on patient care, and we're finding that this has a positive impact on patient care and is going to cause us to rethink our very strict guidelines about where information can be stored," he said.
Some of the sites and devices that the physicians access are in broad use in the private health sector, "but VA is a lot tighter as to what we will allow," Baker said.
