Dr. Valerie Seabaugh, FEHRM Deputy Chief Health Informatics Officer
The Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization (FEHRM) office drives the delivery and optimization of the shared electronic health record (EHR) of the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. One of the obvious benefits of a unified health record is the portability of records. We will no longer ask Veterans with disabilities and mobility challenges to haul boxes of paper records with them to appointments.
However, a less discussed but highly beneficial outcome of having a single, common federal EHR is lowering barriers to specialized telemedicine care for federal health care beneficiaries. In the old systems, patient health records had medical information isolated in paper files or in a single instance of an outdated EHR linked to a local clinic or medical facility. Although the Joint Longitudinal Viewer provided information between agencies, specialists’ access to the siloed record to place orders or document care was a major barrier to coordinating subspecialty telemedicine care for patients. If a beneficiary resided in an area without access to a needed subspecialist, the only way to reliably receive care was usually to travel to a referral medical facility.
With a single record, specialists have all the pertinent patient data at their fingertips regardless of patient location. Patients can receive telemedicine consultation from a subspecialist, many times without leaving their homes. Telehealth appointments using video technology lower barriers for patients to receive specialized care and drive federal health care toward an equitable standard of care regardless of a patient’s geographic location or mobility. For example, watch this Voice of a Veteran video to see how a Veteran in rural Arizona benefits from specialized endocrinology care with VA’s Tele-Diabetes Program.
Maintaining the federal EHR as an accurate and complete warehouse of medical information simplifies providing efficient, coordinated and convenient high-quality care. The FEHRM is at the forefront of lowering barriers to patient care by making it possible for today’s recruits to maintain a coherent lifetime record as they transition through their military career, from basic training all the way to becoming a Veteran beneficiary. The federal EHR drives health care toward an equitable future where patients receive the right care, unbounded from location and driven by choice.
Article link; https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-record-levels-playing-field-patients-needing-specialized-care-ybkne
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