VHIE News
Improving Veteran Care Through Interoperability 
When Veterans receive care inside and outside VA, clinicians depend on timely, accurate information to make informed decisions. Across the Veterans Health Administration’s interoperability portfolio, teams from the Office of Clinical Informatics (OCI) and Veterans Health Information Exchange (VHIE) are continuing work to improve how health electronic information is shared, displayed, and used across systems supporting Veteran care.
During a recent interoperability program demonstration, teams highlighted several efforts aimed at improving clinician access to outside records, strengthening Federal Electronic Health Record (EHR) readiness, and supporting safer, more coordinated care delivery.
One major improvement focused on making outside clinical records easier for clinicians to read and use. The Exchange Partner Management team completed updates to resolve stylesheet rendering issues that prevented some allergy and encounter information from displaying correctly within the Joint Longitudinal Viewer (JLV). The fix improved how clinical data from non-VA partners appears within the system, reducing “missing data” concerns and improving visibility into outside care information.
Teams also highlighted continued efforts to prepare staff and facilities for expanding Federal EHR operations. The VHIE Engagement team reported training more than 3,000 VA staff members on use of the Community Health Summary and Document (CHSD) widget in JLV, while also consolidating and updating guidance materials used across the enterprise.
Another effort focused on strengthening interoperability with community providers before new workflows go live. The VA Direct team completed Content Attachment and Validation (CAV) testing with five non-VA providers supporting the Asheville VA Medical Center as part of an Office of Suicide Prevention pilot. The testing helps ensure clinical documents exchanged between VA and non-VA partners are accurate, complete, and usable before care coordination workflows are activated.
Additional work included improvements to consent management, interoperability analytics, role-based access planning for outside records, and outreach efforts supporting interoperability adoption and Veteran status identification.
Together, these efforts support VHIE and OCI’s broader mission of helping clinicians access the right information at the right time while improving continuity of care for Veterans across VA and non-VA health care organizations nationwide.
Questions? Email VHAVHIEPublicAffairs@va.gov.
