The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense are gearing up to test their single, interoperable Cerner EHR system for the first time since the agencies began working on the program six years ago, according to a June 10 Nextgov report.
VA and DOD will deploy both versions of the Cerner software, which operate off the same baseline but have been configured separately to account for clinician workflows at DOD, VA and the Coast Guard, at North Chicago, Ill.-based Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center.
While the exact timeline for the deployment is not set, both DOD and VA use the Lovell Federal Health Care Center. The facility will be the first to merge the two EHR workflows of DOD and VA clinicians and test the interoperability of the system, according to the report.
DOD and VA use two versions of Cerner's EHR; DOD has MHS Genesis, and VA uses Cerner Millennium. The EHR operates as one system, and each patient has one record, no matter which facility they go to, according to the report.
A joint DOD-VA team is currently looking at workflows and business processes at the Lovell center to ensure the agencies are prepared for the rollout.