The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is looking to change the way it delivers care to the over nine million Veterans who go through the VA health system each year. To help achieve this, the VA is working with Cerner to redesign its electronic health record system. This will ultimately create a seamless health care experience for Veterans, providing them better care and making it easier for them to access and control their own health information anytime, anywhere.
Work on this transformative effort is moving forward rapidly. The VA’s electronic health record modernization program, or EHRM, will not only make the quality of care better for Veterans, but it also could dramatically impact the entire health care.
In this episode of The Cerner Podcast, John Windom, executive director of VA’s Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization, discusses how he anticipates this project will help Veterans and their providers and move the bar with national interoperability and other VA health priorities.
John answers the following questions:
- What is being done to improve health records access for Veterans, and how is this a catalyst for fundamental change in how VA delivers veteran-focused care?
- Although Veterans share a lot of commonalities with any other person, what makes the population unique? What are some health complexities that Veterans face that a typical American might not, and how can the EHRM and the more fluid accessibility to their health data help practitioners with addressing those conditions or situations?
- One of the top priorities for the EHRM program is to smooth the future records connection between the military and VA, so a Veteran or their practitioner will be able to access their military health record years down the road. How will this single record instance help Veterans, either in the near-term when they transition out of service, or later in life, once service-connected conditions begin to present themselves?
- With VA’s health system being one of the nation’s largest, how do you anticipate this will impact community health care providers and the health care industry as a whole?
- How do you envision the EHRM helping to support VA research programs such as the Million Veterans Program?
- Being a Veteran yourself, why is this project personal for you?
Listen to the full podcast below, or click here to view all episodes of The Cerner Podcast!
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