VA's Health Exchange Down a Month

The Veterans Affairs Department doesn't plan to turn on for at least another month a system that exchanges information in veterans' electronic health records with the Defense Department, Roger Baker, VA's chief information officer told me.

Earlier this month, VA shut down its side of the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange (BHIE) with Defense because of a software glitch that resulted in VA clinicians getting bum patient information.

The problem surfaced when a VA doctor accessed the Defense's AHLTA electronic health record system to check prescription data on a female patient. That record showed a Defense physician had prescribed her an erectile dysfunction drug.

This obvious error led VA to issue a patient safety alert and Baker ordered BHIE to be shutdown.

VA has fixed that particular bug, but another one has surfaced, based on anecdotal reports from VA clinicians, Baker said. Department doctors have reported that sometimes when they access patient information through the BHIE interface, they will receive a full list of medications and lab reports but at other times just a truncated list.

Baker said to detect this anomaly, he needs to build a test environment that can replicate the real world conditions. This will require purchase of additional hardware and extensive testing, which by his best estimates will take at least a month.

Since patient safety is paramount at VA, Baker said the decision was made to not turn on BHIE until the tests are completed. Meanwhile, Veterans Affairs will get patient information from Defense the old fashioned way: by phone and fax.