VA Shares Health Information

Week of January 14, 2008

Department of Defense officials have announced the organization-wide release of enhancements to share electronic health information with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). With the new enhancements in place, each agency is now able to view the other agency's clinical encounters, medical procedures, and lists of medical problems on shared patients using the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange. This adds to the pharmacy, allergy, microbiology, and chemistry/hematology data, as well as radiology reports that were made available earlier this year. The software used actively synchronizes data between DOD and VA repositories for patients who receive health services from both agencies.