Federal Manager's Daily Report

The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of

Defense have yet to fully develop an architecture to

establish HealthePeople, a two-way electronic patient

record exchange, and they continue to lack a fully

established project management structure, the General

Accounting Office has said.


It said interdepartmental managerial relationships are

not clearly defined, no entity has been given final

decision making authority and there is no project plan

that showing resource requirements, time frames, roles

and responsibilities.


The two departments have been inching along since 1998

to set up a two-way exchange for veterans, military

personnel and health care providers. They have set up

individual health information systems – VA’s HealtheVet

VistA and DoD’s Composite Health Care System II — and

are trying to define data and message standards, said GAO.


It said that a pharmacy data prototype is underway and

will help define technical specifications, but that there

continues to be no clear vision or strategy of how that

capability will be fully realized, and in what time

period, said GAO.

gao.gov