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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has temporarily shut down health information exchange (HIE) with the Department of Defense after doctors identified errors and missing data in the records received. The questionable information had been transferred through the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange (BHIE), a joint project that allows VA and DoD physicians to view patients' electronic health records (EHRs).
The VA ceased transmissions on March 1, and doctors were notified of the glitch through a patient safety alert issued March 3. The alert informed doctors that queries in several clinical areas had returned no data, a subset of data, incorrect data or complete data, and repeat queries did not ensure the accuracy or completeness of data received. No patient harm has been reported, and only 1 percent of queries were affected, according to Nextgov.
The VA identified old code as the cause of the IT issue and has since rectified the problem, according to the VA's chief information officer. The department plans to reopen the BHIE for data transmission on March 9.
Click here to read the VA Patient Safety Alert.
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