House Blasts 'U-Turn' On iEHR Project

House Veterans' Affairs Committee members had some harsh words for VA and Department of Defense officials at a hearing on Wednesday for altering their approach to forming an integrated electronic health record, calling the move "a step backward."

The two agencies, which initially had planned to create a joint records system from the ground up, cited budgetary and time constraints when they announced that they instead would focus on using "existing solutions" to combine their current and disparate systems.

Committee chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) said that the model has "been tried and failed" in his opening remarks at the hearing. "Interoperable is not the same as integrated," Miller said, according to an EHR Intelligence article...