Hagel mulls putting Defense Dept. on VistA

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Congress this week that he is investigating the possibility of switching the military's health records to the Veteran Administration's VistA to deal with long-running interoperability issues between the two systems. Hagel told a House appropriations subcommittee hearing on the department's $615 billion spending request for fiscal 2014 that he was putting DoD spending on interoperability with the VA on hold “until I get my arms around this.”

Hagel's promises came in response to questioning about the systems by Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), the ranking member of the defense subcommittee, who noted that Congress in its fiscal 2008 authorization bill had directed both the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments “to develop a single electronic health-record system that would follow a service member from the time he or she enlisted until the time they exited into VA care.”...

...“There have been programs and progress made,” Hagel said. “We're not where we should be. We're not where we committed to be. But we will get there,” he promised.
Hagel, whose appointment was confirmed by the Senate in February, is a Vietnam War veteran. During a stint in the 1980s at what was then the Veterans Administration, he was an early supporter of the VA's efforts to develop the home-grown EHR that would become VistA...