Electronic Health Records: VA and DOD Need to Support Cost and Schedule Claims, Develop Interoperability Plans, and Improve Collaboration

United States. Government Accountability Office.

United States. Government Accountability Office.

关键词: Government accountability -- United States.;    health care;    veterans;    information management;    national defense;   

RP-ID  :  GAO-14-302
RP-ID  :  661199

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Defense (DOD) abandoned their plans to develop an integrated electronic health record (iEHR) system and are instead pursuing separate efforts to modernize or replace their existing systems in an attempt to create an interoperable electronic health record. Specifically, in February 2013, the secretaries cited challenges in the cost and schedule for developing the single, integrated system and announced that each department would focus instead on either building or acquiring similar core sets of electronic health record capabilities, then ensuring interoperability between them. However, VA and DOD have not substantiated their claims that the current approach will be less expensive and more timely than the single-system approach. Major investment decisions—including terminating or significantly restructuring an ongoing program—should be justified using analyses that compare the costs and schedules of alternative proposals. Yet, the departments have not developed revised cost and schedule estimates for their new modernization efforts and any additional efforts needed to achieve interoperability between the new systems, and compared them with the relevant estimates for their former approach. In the absence of such a comparison, VA and DOD lack assurance that they are pursuing the most cost-effective and timely course of action for delivering the fully interoperable electronic health record the departments have long pursued to provide the best possible care for service members and veterans."