From Adam to AAHPN...
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From: Oliver,AJ
Sent: Mon 28/05/2012 19:43
To: Foubister,T
Subject: VHA and EHR
Tom
Could you forward to the AAHPN - thanks.
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Hi
Re. the VHA and the electronic health record. The VHA would have offered it to the NHS for free in the mid 2000s. This is because they saw it as sharing with another public body. In return, they would have wanted the NHS to share future developments of its EHR with the VHA. This is a fact. Jonathan Perlin, then Under-Secretary of the VHA told me this personally in 2005. I followed up with the UK Department of Health hierarchy at the time. After a long pursuit, the head of IT (my mind has gone blank on is name, but he's famous in UK health policy) told me that they didn't pursue the VHA option because they thought the operating system as old fashioned. I'm not a computer expert so I can't really comment too much on that. What I can say is that the VHA EHR is fantastic. It is used for far, far, far more than just billing purposes. I was suspicious about motivations, but nobody was interested then, not even some very senior professors who might have been able to exercise some influence (but probably not). Had they done so, who knows? They might have saved the NHS billions.
I'm not sure if the VHA would have offered it to the US public sector for free. Jonathan didn't mention that. I suspect they would have, but I don't know.
I very much doubt that the VHA would have offered it to the US (or any private) sector for free.
Salute
Adam
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