Hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Veterans Affairs Committee - Sharing of Electronic Medical Information

Interview

Hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Veterans Affairs Committee - Sharing of Electronic Medical Information Between the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs

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REP. TIMOTHY J. WALZ (D-MN): Thank you, chairman, and thank you, general, a special thank you for your service in where you're at in providing medical care, which I think is without a doubt the best surgical and the best medical care ever given to warriors in the history of mankind, and that has been an amazing success story. And this issue and this topic of medical records -- critically important I understand, and many of us I think oversimplify what goes into this, what data needs to be on there. And I represent the part of Minnesota that has the Mayo Clinic, and this is a conversation I've had many, many times on this on a broader area of healthcare in general and what's going to be done.

Now, it looks like and what I'm hearing is -- I'm very optimistic too -- that massive progress has been made. I think for our perspective here in Congress, the end result, the progress, the improved medical records -- it's going to help in terms of patient care, cost, research, all of those things that go with medical records.

My question to you is -- and I know this is, again -- some of these have to be subjective. What do you attribute what appears to be an increased pace of change, an increased pace of trying -- or a sense of urgency to implement this idea of data sharing and electronic medical records, or do you think it's just been on a continuum and it's finally reaching -- (inaudible) -- where it's gotten to where we can get the types of things you're talking about?

GEN. ROBB: Well, I think, of course, you know, it was the President's vision that we go this direction as a nation.

And as I spend time also in my professional capacity with my state organizations and associations from the state of Florida, they are wrestling, again, with how are they as a state going to come up with a electronic medical record or healthcare information systems platform to support that vision? If it were easy, I think one of the states would've figured this out already.

And so I applaud the Department of Defense, again, for leading the charge. You know, sometimes we make some of our best advances in crisis, and I think that has probably been part of the addition to the momentum of where we're going, this sense of urgency, 'cause there's a lot of competing priorities out there.

I believe, as we all believe, that we have the interest of our patients, whether they're civilian or whether they're veterans or whether they're active duty, at heart. And I believe as a nation and with the Department of Defense and with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the federal government in the lead on this I think we have the opportunity to set the standard for what is an electronic health record or, even bigger, what I call a health information systems platform to support patient care as we want it to be in the future.

REP. WALZ: One of the questions that always comes up here is if -- the Congress's role is providing not only oversight, but the resources. In your experience now, are the resources there to make this transition, because many of us up here understand it's a scarce amount of resources from what we're getting out of it, but this issue is so broad and so important, and especially in the care of our veterans in seamless transitions. I kind of asked the question, the last question, with a little bit of leaning towards -- did Walter Reed wake us all up and those types of things? Was this one part of it? And I guess my question to you is do you feel that the resources are there or the commitment is there to get this right this time?

GEN. ROBB: I think the oversight and the emphasis is there, absolutely. This is a tremendous, monumental paradigm shift from where we were and to where we're going. And it's taking a lot of resources, probably more than we maybe had anticipated. I think we have the brain power to do it. I think we have some of the solutions. In fact, I think we have most of the solutions, at least to get us through the interim. The next generation platform is something that we need to work on. But for the interim, for the next 12 to 18 or 24 months I believe we have some solutions in place.

Could we accelerate that with resources? The answer is potentially, but I'm not in that business, so I don't know if we can go any faster if, let's say, either more manpower or money was thrown at it. Sir, I don't know that. But I know that they have a roadmap, a way ahead, which you will hear later, that I am very optimistic about in making this happen. And if they can have the opportunity to answer that question later, then they can probably tell you whether or not the resourcing piece of it is something that could either accelerate this or slow it down. Yes, sir.

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