The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs can’t share medical records digitally.
That’s just one of the outstanding reforms to veteran medical record keeping that members of the House Committee on Appropriations blasted Pentagon officials Wednesday for being unable to implement.
“In the meantime, we’ve got young veterans dying, going blind, suffering interminable illness because of bureaucratic crap,” Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., told a panel of Pentagon officials during the committee hearing.
Rogers said that one of his constituents recently fell victim to the flawed system. The unnamed veteran suffered injuries to his eyes in Iraq, with one completely destroyed. He was transferred to Germany for surgery, which partially restored vision to his other eye. After leaving the military, the veteran suffered an infection to the remaining eye, which the VA was not able to treat because it could not get his records from Germany.
“They knew he had been operated on, but they could not operate because they did not know what had been done before, and they were afraid they would kill him,” said Rogers. “So they turned him away, and of course he went blind. That’s inexcusable.”
There is a degree of interoperability between the two systems when it comes to basic biographical information, according to acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan.
“The real issue has been on passing of the actual records. I can’t explain to you the technical complexity of that, but that has been the crux of the problem,” he told Rogers.
Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, expressed concern over a lack of perceived urgency from officials at the Pentagon, which she said has “incensed and infuriated” many on the committee.
“We recognize that we owe to our servicemen and women to take care of them. I mean, you have that commitment from me,” said Shanahan.
Rogers and Granger said that Congress has spent 10 years and poured billions of dollars into finding a solution to what is a seemingly simple problem. Rogers noted he was told in recent meetings with Pentagon staff that a solution could take another four or five years.
“We’ve been holding peoples’ feet to the fire to get these MTFs (military treatment facilities) integrated, but we owe you a better answer and four years is unacceptable,” said Shanahan.
Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie signed an agreement in September to align their electronic health record rollouts so they can share data. The VA signed a contract with Cerner Corporation last year to replace its 40-year-old Veterans Integrated System Technology Architecture system. The same system is currently being phased into the Department of Defense.
President Trump prioritized fixing the litany of problems at the VA at the start of his presidency, including the archaic electronic health record system, but the department continues to suffer from information technology woes.
