VA To Add VLER Exchange Communities In 2013

The Veterans Affairs Department will add over the next year to the 13 regions of the country where VA and Defense Department medical facilities share information with providers in the private sector as part of the virtual lifetime electronic record program (VLER).

Those communities already include San Diego; Hampton, Va.; and Buffalo-Western, N.Y. VA and DOD will be able to proceed now that the nationwide health information network (NwHIN Exchange) has been changed to the eHealth Exchange, according to Tim Cromwell, VA’s director of standards and interoperability and manager of VA-DOD interagency VLER health programs.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT recently transferred the exchange operations to HealtheWay, a non-profit organization. Under the VLER program, VA, DOD and private providers use the eHealth Exchange standards and services to query for and retrieve data securely through the Internet...