Sanford Bishop: “I believe that this amendment reflects the apparent obstruction of the Department of Defense on the electronic health…”

“I believe that this amendment reflects the apparent obstruction of the Department of Defense on the electronic health record issue; and let me explain to you how we got here. The 2008 National Defense Authorization Act directed the two Departments to develop a single electronic health record system that will follow a servicemember from the time he or she enlisted in the military to the time they exited the VA care, by 2009. However, after a number of management, oversight, and planning snags and snafus, and the cost estimates that grew from $4 billion to now nearly $12 billion, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki decided to alter their plans to focus on making that current electronic health record system more interoperable. Just recently, Secretary Hagel, the Department of Defense, made the decision to modernize the Defense Department's electronic health record through purchase of commercial software. A recent memo released by the Department of Defense makes no reference to the integrated electronic health records; and it seems more of the same go-it-alone, stovepipe approach that has been favored by the Pentagon in the past. In addition to the Department of Defense's memo, it also made no mention of the congressionally mandated role of the Interagency Program Office set up to run the integrated electronic health records project and staffed by more than 300 personnel from both Departments.…”