Veterans Health Administration

Veteran Interoperability Pledge

The Veteran Interoperability Pledge (VIP) works toward developing a framework to allow Veterans Affairs and community providers to securely exchange information to assist in the care of Veterans receiving treatment inside and outside VA.

What is the Pledge?

To honor America’s Veterans by providing exceptional health care that improves their health and well-being, health care stakeholders  pledge to collaborate with the Department of Veterans Affairs in advancing technologies that improve care coordination and efficiency of care for Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors—supporting programs such as the Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022 and the Veterans Comprehensive Prevention, Access to Care, and Treatment (COMPACT) Act of 2020.

The Veteran Interoperability Pledge enables the Application Programming Interface (API) that enables health systems application access to an authoritative VA resource to determine Veteran status. This framework enables the VA and participating community healthcare systems to:

• Accurately identify Veterans when they seek care from providers in our communities.
• Connect Veterans with VA and community resources that promote health and healthcare—especially VA services that can potentially lower Veterans’ out-of-pocket expenses.
• Responsively and reliably coordinate care for shared patients--including exchange of information about care requested and provided across multiple healthcare facilities.

To achieve these goals, we agree to:

• Enable health system application access to authoritative VA resources to determine Veteran status.
• Enable automation of benefit eligibility determination and referrals.
• Enable health system application access to identify local, state, and federal health resources.
• Enable VA application access to health-system clinical and administrative data for quality assessment and care coordination.
• Advance and implement federally recognized, national interoperability standards, privacy and security frameworks related to the executing the Pledge’s commitments on information exchange and use of health information.

Milestones

• Currently 10 health systems enabled API in production
• First 18 months of pilot launch, over 14.9 million queries
• Verified over 790,000 Veterans status
• In its first three months, one healthcare system reported 12,000 API confirmed Veteran status (of which 1,000 Veterans were not previously identified)
  • Over 5,600 Veterans received resource brochures and additional information
  • Prioritized identifying Veterans in Urgent Care and Emergency Departments helped target VA outreach for those in suicidal crisis and share critical resources (such as COMPACT and PACT Act information)

Timeline (September 2024-August 2025)

In September 2024, VA announced that Epic and Oracle Health customers can access VA’s Veteran Application Programming Interface (API) as part of the Veteran Interoperability Pledge. This enabled their health system and hospital customers to identify Veterans in their care, opening the door to care and benefits for potentially thousands of Veterans.

Benefits for Veterans include:

• Seamless Identification: Veterans are immediately recognized by community providers via the API use by participating systems,
• Expanded Benefits Access: Providers help Veterans by sharing useful information about resources or benefits that they may qualify for—such as PACT or COMPACT Act (see below for more information) and other VA resources, that can lead to reduced out-of-pocket expenses

Better Coordinated Care: Complete and timely access to VA healthcare and community clinical data ensures that healthcare providers can make informed decisions and improve the continuity of care across multiple health care organizations

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