Integrated Health Records and the Bureaucracy Thing

Barclay Butler, director of the Defense/Veterans Affairs Interagency Program Office charged with developing integrated electronic health records to serve both departments, said in his first report to Congress that one of his biggest challenges is dealing with bureaucracy. What a surprise.

Butler said in the report, which a kind reader sent my way, that his office “has been continually challenged to effectively coordinate joint documents, policies and decisions through both departments for senior leadership approval in a timely manner.”

Butler added -- and this is no surprise either -- that “planning for the separate review processes within each department and the satisfactory adjudication of comments has required the [program office] to expect long lead times.”

He also observed that the integrated health record has been widely publicized and “pressure is already mounting to deliver capabilities.”

I’m pleased to be part of the publicizing process and will continue to do so for the next five years until the iEHR is finally deployed.