VA-DOD Health Exchange Adds 15,000-Member Hospital Network – By Aaron Boyd (Nextgov) / Oct 16 2020
The CommonWell Health Alliance officially joined the joint health information exchange, broadening the government’s ability to digitally share patient data with private health care providers.
Veterans have been given more choices when it comes to their health care, and a new partnership with the 15,000 hospitals in the CommonWell Health Alliance network should make it easier to digitally share patient information between federal clinics and private sector health care providers.
The Veterans Affairs Department’s separate but concurrent efforts to digitize its patient records and streamline veteran access to private sector health providers come together at the joint health information exchange, which facilitates the sharing of patient information between VA and other agencies—like the Defense Department and Coast Guard—as well as private health care providers.
This week, VA’s Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization, or FEHRM, program announced the addition of CommonWell’s 15,000 hospitals and clinics to the program’s joint health information exchange, or HIE, network.
The exchange was officially stood up in April with 215 partners across the U.S., enabling most of those providers to send patient data from VA, DOD and the Coast Guard, and receive information from those agencies, as well. However, some providers only share patient data in one direction, either receiving data from federal agencies or providing it to them, but not both.
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