WASHINGTON -- Speaking before the annual meeting of the Military Health Systems in Washington, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson said the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has “one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated electronic systems” for patient records in the nation.
“VA’s electronic health record system has largely eliminated all errors stemming from lost or incomplete medical records, making us one of the safest health care systems in the nation,” Nicholson said.
In the mid-1990s, VA clinicians began using computerized patient records for everything from recording examinations by doctors to displaying the results of lab tests and x-rays. The Department’s health care workers currently see more than 1 million patients each week in more than 1,400 medical centers, clinics, nursing homes and other sites of care.
“Today VA is on the razor’s edge of health care efficiency and quality, delivering its services with commitment, competence and compassion,” he said. “What cured us? Well, it was a large and concentrated dose of technology.”
Patient records are available 100 percent of the time to health care workers, compared to 60 percent of the time twenty years ago when the Department relied on paper records. VA has managed to eliminate retesting patients because of missing laboratory reports, which account for about one out of every five lab tests in the private sector.
On January 24, Nicholson and the Department of Defense officials announced plans to create an electronic health record for inpatient care that will be instantly accessible to clinicians in both departments.
