VA shuts access to DoD medical records after data errors

Health information interoperability efforts between the Veterans Health Administration and the Military Health System suffered another setback, as the Department of Veterans Affairs cut off access to the Defense Department's AHLTA EMR after VA officials found errors in medical records downloaded from AHLTA.

No patients were injured as a result of the inaccurate data, according to the VA, but "the potential exists for decisions regarding patient care to be made using incorrect or incomplete data," the VA said in a patient-safety alert sent out last Wednesday.

VA officials first discovered problems with the data exchange late last month when a VA clinician found a record in AHLTA indicating that a female patient had been prescribed a drug for erectile dysfunction. NextGov reports that the clinician's query actually had returned the record of another patient. "The VA clinician may see the patient's data during one session, but another session may not display the data previously seen," the VA alert explains. "This problem occurs intermittently and has been reported when querying DoD laboratory, pharmacy and radiology reports."

For more on this computer glitch:
- read this NextGov story
- see the VA's safety alert (.pdf)

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