ABOVE: Paul Lawrence, Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; speaks during a Wednesday afternoon stop at VA Illiana Health Care in Danville.
They began the process in about 2017. And despite some slow downs along the way such as the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been working on an Electronic Health Record to serve Veterans nationwide when it comes to health care. This year, parts of Michigan and Ohio have seen the electronic record go live. Lots of Indiana will go live in August. And the entire VA Illiana system is scheduled to go live next march.
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence stopped at Danville’s VA Illiana campus on Wednesday to talk about this. He says, all Veterans, no matter how long it’s been since their days of service, will have their records transferred; so ALL OF IT can be seen on this new electronic record. And there will now be one system from someone’s service member days, to their Veteran days. Lawrence says the purchase of a system by the Department of Defense in 2016 really got it rolling.
AUDIO: The Electronic Health Record is a digital image of all the things that happened to a service member; while they’re in service, through their time with us in VA. So the Veterans do not have to repeat; “Don’t you remember? I hurt myself in service….” we see all of that information so we can provide them care.
VA medical providers and staff are currently being trained for the new system.
VA Illiana Health Care System Director Dr. Staci Williams (R) chats with Veterans Integrated Service Network 12 Director Dr. Daniel S. Zomchek.
VA Illiana Health Care System Director Dr. Staci Williams says that construction you might be noticing on their Danville campus is probably electronic health record related.
AUDIO: It involves a little bit more sophisticated IT networks and systems. And because some of that involves like digging and the like underneath the roads, we then had to do some road work as well to adjust.
Meanwhile, Dr. Williams mentioned that Thursday (July 16th) will be the day of the ribbon cutting for the new VA Illiana facility in Champaign. Williams says Danville remains a very important part of VA Illiana, with the new Champaign facility mostly filling a key service gap.
AUDIO: A good portion of our Veterans that are seen in the VA Illiana, like catchment area, or family of clinics; are actually living west of Champaign. So this allows us to make sure that they receive health care, just like the Veterans in this area as well.
Lawrence says that by the time the final nationwide portion goes live in 2031, the entire Electronic Health Record for the VA will have reached a cost of about 37 billion dollars.
