Roger Baker Touts VA and DoD Health IT Commonality at Budget Hearing

The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments are weeks away from agreement on a common electronic health record, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker told a congressional panel Feb. 17.

"I believe that will happen, with strong influence from the secretaries, in the next month or two," Baker told the House Veterans Affairs Committee during a hearing on the department's fiscal 2012 budget request.

Lack of a common system in the two departments has long been a subject of criticism, most recently by the Government Accountability Office in a Feb. 2 report, which quoted a May 2010 analysis that found the two departments share 10 of 13 core health IT requirements.

The VA has already agreed to adopt the Electronic Data Interchange Personal Identifier the DoD assigns to all service members as the identifier of record for veterans, Baker added.