Electronic Medical Card System for US Veterans

2022: Launch of electronic medical card system

In mid-March 2022, the United States launched an electronic medical card system for veterans worth $16 billion. The US Department of Human Services plans to introduce a system of digital medical records to the second Washington hospital in Walla Walla, and then accelerate implementation in other hospitals and clinics in the Pacific Northwest and other regions by December 2022.

An electronic card is created by the doctor when the patient comes to his appointment. It includes information about the patient's diseases, visits to the doctor, prescribed drugs, hospital sheets. Soon, the results of clinical analyses and other important data about the user will also appear in the map. Former US President Donald Trump called the efforts of his administration to unite the medical records of active-duty military personnel and their electronic medical records (EHR) after serving, long overdue revolution in the medical care of veterans.

Electronic Medical Records (EHR) in the United States

The clinical, technical and management challenges outlined by Inspector General Michael Missal on March 17, 2022 represent the first systemic view of what happened when a software (software) upgrade created by tech giant Cerner was rolled out to four connected clinics in Washington, Idaho and Montana. Missal also revealed the ensuing crisis in the health care system, which led to a sharp drop in productivity, as medical personnel struggled to cope with the system, leaving many US veterans to their fate. The Virginia Inspector General released three reports expressing serious concerns about the safety of the EMR system, which is scheduled to continue deployment at the end of March 2022 and in other states.

As investigators found out, an appointment with a doctor took months. Veterans could not log on to a secure website that provides them with personal medical information and allows them to communicate with doctors. The EMR system issued poor computer links to record an appointment with a telemedicine doctor. Many applications from medical personnel with a request to fix the problems, only from October 2020 to the end of March 2021 almost 40 thousand applications were submitted, and 13 thousand of them remained unanswered.

E-mail addresses and phone numbers of patients were not accurately transferred from the old accounting system to the newly created one, which caused the supply of medicines and communications with veterans to break down. Doctors could not determine whether their patients' medications were cancelled or expired, and the drugs disappeared from the drug lists. Outpatient drug orders remained untreated. Medications mailed had confused instructions or no instructions at all. Registered nurses could order medications without physician review and approval, which in turn violated U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulations.

The Virginia Inspector General's reports also state that most of these problems have not been resolved, although inspectors are unsure of the absence of serious medical problems or even fatalities due to failures in the EMR system. A number of state deputies at the end of 2021 called for the suspension of the work of the EMR, but were not heard. The deployment of the system will continue: March 26, 2022 in Washington state, and in April 2022 already in Ohio.^[1]

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