The Presidents FY 2018 budget emphasizes the need for the Veterans Administration (VA) www.va.gov to invest in IT. The proposed budget would provide sufficient funding for sustainment, development, and modernization initiatives to improve the quality of services provided to veterans and also avoid the costs involved in maintaining outdated inefficient systems.
The Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs held a hearing on March 15, 2017 to discuss healthcare at the VA. The Director for the General Accountability Office (GAO www.gov.gov, Debra Draper gave testimony on GAO’s concerns with the progress made at the VA concerning health IT.
A recent GAO report www.gao.gov/assets/690/683381.pdf stresses the important need ffor the VA to take community care into consideration when discussing decisions related to IT policies, oversight, IT training, and resource needs.
Carolyn Clancy M.D, Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Organizational Excellence at the VA, also appeared before the Senate hearing on March 15th to discuss some of the issues contributing to VA’s IT’s challenges.
She reports that the agency has learned through experience that integrating with or updating VistA is difficult and costly. Some at the VA think that improvements should be made to VistA regardless of what the future holds. Retaining or replacing VistA is a difficult decision for the VA.
VistA Evolution with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) www.va.gov/health and the VA Office of Information and Technology https://www.oit.va.gov would improve the efficiency and quality of veterans’ healthcare.
The goal for VistA Evolution is to modernize the VA’s IT system, increase data interoperability with the Department of Defense (DOD) and with network care partners to reduce the time it takes to deploy new health information management capabilities.
VistA Evolution funds have enabled critical investments in systems and infrastructure, supports interoperability, networking, and infrastructure sustainment, plus continues to operate legacy systems. The VistA Evolution system should be completed in 2018.
According to Dr. Clancy, “These investments will deliver value for veterans and VA providers regardless of whether the VA’s path is to continue with VistA or shift to a commercial EHR as DOD is doing, or maintain a combination of both. It is important to achieve interoperability.”
Dr Clancy also pointed out how the Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP) http://vacloud.us/groups/ehmp is a cornerstone of the VistA Evolution Program. eHMP will fill clinical gaps in the VA’s current tools, bridge the EHR modernization effort, and simplify VHA’s overall clinical user experience. Upon completion eHMP will offer robust support for veteran-centric healthcare, team-based healthcare, and offer quality driven healthcare while improving access based on clinical need.