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Veterans to gain online access to records

The Dept. of Veterans Affairs will let patients sign up by next spring to view and share some medical data.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. July 7, 2003.

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The U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs next spring will start offering the millions of veterans who seek treatment at its facilities around the country access to their records over the Internet, a move that some surmise could hasten the trend of online record accessibility.

Although patients will not be able to view complete records, they will be able to access copies containing data that VA clinicians deem to be the most relevant, said Robert M. Kolodner, MD, a psychiatrist and acting chief of health information at the VA. Those data include progress notes, discharge summaries, medications, ECGs and most laboratory results.

To view their information online, patients will have to sign up for the offering, called MyHealtheVet. They also will be able to authorize relatives, friends and any physician treating them to access their records, Dr. Kolodner said. "They can release as much or as little as they want to someone else," he said.

Patients also will be able to request corrections or amendments to their records, which they have the right to do under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, by contacting the VA medical center where their records are maintained, said Ginger Price, acting director of the Veterans Health Administration's health informatics strategy office.

The VA envisions that someday it will be able to electronically exchange data with non-VA physicians and facilities, Dr. Kolodner said. But before that vision can be realized, physician use of electronic medical records will have to be pervasive, and the health care industry will have to adopt uniform clinical data standards, which will take time, Dr. Kolodner said.