VA, DoD Owe EHR Plan To Congress By End Of January

Funding legislation agreed to by the House and Senate this week mandates that the U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense present a plan for building either an interoperable or single electronic health record by the end of January.

The bill--the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014--calls on the two agencies to create a "detailed programs plan for the oversight and execution of the interoperable" EHRs by Jan. 31, 2014. What's more, it requires that by Oct. 1, 2014, all healthcare information in both the DoD's AHLTA system and the VA's VistA system "be computable in real time and comply with the existing national data standards and have a process in place to ensure data is standardized as national standards continue to evolve."