VHIE News
Electronic Health Information Exchange Helps Streamline Dental Care: Giving Veterans More Choices
VA is moving on from fax and mail. These old methods for sharing patient data caused delays and needed back-and-forth communication. The electronic health information exchange (eHIE) tool VA Direct helps solve these problems by making eHIE faster and more reliable. When communication between providers is easier, Veterans have more choices in their healthcare. This is because more providers can securely access patient records. Giving Veterans choices is a top priority for Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas Collins.
When VA Central Western Massachusetts Health Care System started using VA Direct, they saw how it could help dental offices handle tasks like patient referrals, radiology reports, follow-ups, and important messages much better.
Dr. Victoria Baeger Daffner, the Chief of Dental Services at VA Central Western Massachusetts Health Care System, noticed that using VA Direct could fix many issues. VA Direct could save paper and was more reliable than fax or mail. It also made filing documents easier and got rid of the need to convert paperwork. She noted a typical dental patient can have 6-7 separate referrals just to create a treatment plan, organize their specialty appointments and schedule follow up visits. Dr. Baeger Daffner said, “so we [Dental] are a paperwork-heavy group and knew that we could really take advantage of streamlining it [using VA Direct].”
Dr. Baeger Daffner’s story shows that VA Direct can improve patient care coordination and increase efficiency. For VA Medical Centers, especially dental practices, who are looking to work faster and provide better patient care coordination, VA Direct has been proven to be very helpful.
