Military med chiefs queasy about their new EHR

I am not certain at this point Kim Bolen RN CCM ACM about the security and utility of the VA upgrade to Electronic Health Records. My experience in the military until 2008 was that firewalls existed between the various medical systems so that my Pentagon clinic records were visible in Walter Reed but those from the rest of the army were not.
I understood in the past that the goal was to start making records accessible by the VA for military service members coming in after some date after 2018. the concept was to expand the capability first to those who came in more recently and incrementally expanding the capability to those who were serving.
I always recommend that service members maintain copies of their own records in paper as well as PDF format for portability.

this bullshit is what I absolutely despise. Right now on the active side of the house. If you're army/air force you have Altha, CHCS, MEDPROs, and 72 other dam programs to monitor a soldiers readiness. Yet.. Altha alone can do absolutely all of it by its self. Over with the Navy and Marines they use an entirely different system. So that means when I treat Marines that train on an army base. If they are seen at all they have to hand carry medical records to their new duty station to get it uploaded into the navy system. Our systems don't communicate.

Altha... even though some may have different words for it. Is a phenomenal program. It ain't broke, don't fix it.

If the people at the top of all this had any sense at all they wouldn't need to pour money into upgrading EHRs. instead they would should down all the money we're bleeding into systems like CHCS which honestly functions like it hasn't been updated since 1992 and put all our branches on the same field.

Then guess what? expanding the Altha servers to hold the growing base of incoming troops and open it to the VA too. So no actual hand off needs to be done what so ever. a person in a VA clinic can pull up patient information directly from the servers just like we currently do in the Army.

Unfortunately this creates very little opportunity for the heads of organizations like the VA and limits the possibility to shave more money like those that went before them.

Not to have a completely negative post though, the changes are in the works for the army at least. fairly excited to see it come together honestly. it's going to really streamline patient care and also communication from provider to command groups as well.

Did anyone check to make sure Michelle Obama's college roommate did not get this government contract? Anyone remember the utter failure of the fielding of Obamacare automated Sign-up- $500 million wasted for a $10 million max program..Crony insider bid contracting? Leading edge tech fielding does have problems. In my personal civilian care (generally healthy) Electric Records are great, my physician (45y.o. [guessing only]) is outstanding to using tech. LPN. Interviews, takes vitals, Doc comes in reads, reviews lab reports asked questions, tells me walk more and to drop weight, writes prescription antibiotics for strep throat, says good by and leaves. Easy peasy (USAF buddy's saying)!