10 Lessons Learned From Linking VLER to Private Health Orgs

The research on coordinated care is clear: Patients experience better outcomes when medical teams operate within a connected healthcare ecosystem. Access to the patient’s complete medical history helps physicians make better decisions, reduces medical errors and eliminates duplicate diagnostic testing.

During the past several years, the US government has undertaken a number of initiatives to encourage healthcare practitioners to adopt and use electronic medical records (EMRs). One such project was the development of the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) program, a joint effort between the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) to develop and implement an electronic health record system to allow secure sharing of data between civilian and military healthcare organizations.