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Today, Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared at the start of the subcommittee’s oversight hearing to examine improvements to inoperability between the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA’s) Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) and community care providers and what needs to be done to ensure no matter where veterans receive care, their doctor has access to their full medical history.

Good afternoon.

The Subcommittee will come to order.

I want to start by saying that I am frustrated and disappointed by the lateness of VA’s testimony.

I asked VA to appear today because interoperability impacts all veterans, and the Department’s testimony is critical for this Subcome Department’s testimony.
mittee’s oversight efforts.

In the future, I expect VA to meet this Subcommittee’s very reasonable deadlines and give my colleagues and I the appropriate amount of time to review th
Now, onto today’s topic.

Today, somewhere in America, a veteran is walking into a new doctor’s office for the first time.

This veteran won’t have any prior relationship with the provider,

And they may not have any of their medical records on file at the hospital.

This doctor’s office could be at a VA medical center or a community care facility.

No matter the location, the doctor will have the same question:

How do I give this veteran the best care without knowing their medical history?

Without knowing the veteran’s past medications.

Without knowing the veteran’s previous lab results.

Without knowing whether this veteran has struggled with mental health.

There are several doctors on our panel today, and I am sure they would agree that complete and accurate information is an important ingredient in high-quality healthcare.

Providers want their patient’s healthcare data to be interoperable.

They want to be able to exchange medical records regardless of which hospital they were created at and use that information to treat their patients.

I want to be clear; VA and the entire healthcare industry have made enormous progress over the last two decades and millions of healthcare records are exchanged every year.

Even when data exchange does not happen, veterans still receive great healthcare every day when providers don’t have access to their complete medical history.

However, the best healthcare requires truly interoperable healthcare data that moves with the veteran regardless of what EHR is being used by the doctor who is treating them.

There are gaps that remain and opportunities for improvement.

VA provides healthcare to millions of veterans every year – including myself.

However, roughly one-third of VA care is provided by the Community Care network.

Throughout their lifetime, veterans will visit an assortment of providers at the DoD, VA and private hospitals.

Every appointment produces new information.

VA has made a ton of progress exchanging data with larger hospital systems but struggles to exchange data with many smaller hospitals and physicians’ offices.

In order to live up to our commitment to veterans, VA must be able to share and use complete and accurate healthcare information with its Community Care partners.

A big part of that is ensuring that when healthcare data is exchanged between VA and community care providers it is standardized.

There is only so much a provider can do with a list of lab results if each hospital enters the data differently.

This is the difference between a “read-only” file and data that is searchable and sortable.

The quality of the data is just as important as the quantity.

That is why this Committee put a requirement in the Dole Act for VA to adopt health information interoperability standards for the Department and its Community Care providers.

These standards are about data quality and will improve how VA and Community Care providers exchange data for care and benefits, patient identity matching, and more.

Ultimately improving outcomes for veterans inside and outside VA.

During this hearing, I hope to hear some preliminary updates on VA’s strategy.

In addition, I hope to hear about some of VA’s recent progress and their plans to bridge the interoperability gaps that still exist.

VA recently created the “Veterans Interoperability Pledge” which allows private hospitals to instantly confirm whether a patient is a veteran.

There are many health issues that are assumed to be linked to military service.

Simply knowing that a patient is a veteran allows healthcare providers outside VA’s system to give the best care, consider service-related health issues, and quickly connect them to the right support.

This is an important leap forward for data exchange between VA and its community partners.

While it is only in its infancy, I am eager to hear more about its early success and VA’s plans to expand to more community care providers.

VA is currently connected to over ninety percent of hospitals in America through Health Information Exchanges.

Ten years ago, VA exchanged less than one-hundred thousand healthcare documents a year.
Now they are exchanging millions of documents.

While VA is connected to roughly 90 percent of U.S. hospitals,

The last ten percent are the hardest to reach.

And far less than ninety percent of physicians’ offices are currently exchanging healthcare data with VA.

I will close by saying that many of the technical challenges around healthcare interoperability are no longer obstacles.

What remains is for VA to organize and collaborate with its community care partners to make sure that the provider I mentioned earlier, who is seeing a veteran for the first time today, has all the information they need to provide the best care possible.

Thank you all, again, for being here. I look forward to your testimony.

With that, I yield to Ranking Member Budzinski for her opening statement.