4.3: Governance

Maintain a leadership framework to oversee and promote a successful partnership, institutionalize needed change and foster collaboration to support service members and veterans in an open and transparent manner.

Other Information:

The Department and Veterans Affairs are committed to maintaining a leadership framework to oversee and promote a successful partnership, institutionalize needed change and foster collaboration to support service members and veterans in an open and transparent manner. The Joint Executive Council institutionalizes sharing and collaboration across the Departments to ensure efficient use of services and resources for delivery of health care and other authorized benefits. Both Departments are already working together to improve access, quality, effectiveness and efficiency of health care for service members, veterans and their families. Subject Matter Experts from both Departments engage in this collaborative work on a regular basis through the Health Executive Council and its working groups. The Health Executive Council oversees the cooperative efforts of each Department’s health care organizations and supports mutually beneficial opportunities to improve business practices; ensures high quality, cost effective health care services for both the Department and Veterans Affairs beneficiaries; and facilitates opportunities to improve resource utilization. Established by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, the DoD/VA Interagency Program Office sits between the two Departments, with a Congressional mandate to aid in development and implementation of electronic health records that will improve the quality of care, and quality of life, extended to our Nation’s service members and veterans. With more than 80 percent of the country’s electronic health records shared between the two Departments, the task of the IPO is monumental. The office is an honest broker and a single point of accountability, tasked with coordinating, overseeing and participating in the Departments’ efforts to share their vast amounts of medical and administrative data. The IPO will ensure progress made on this flagship initiative is sustainable, using its unique position between the Department and Veterans Affairs to: • Identify interdepartmental project risk and mitigation strategies • Harmonize Department and Veterans Affairs’ plans to establish a baseline agreement to achieve successful implementation • Establish and monitor performance metrics • Document future potential interoperability enhancements • Verify completion of interoperability requirements • Establish and maintain interagency collaboration sites for work teams The IPO is assigned coordination and oversight duties for information sharing through its charter. The IPO serves a critical function by helping to communicate, collaborate and coordinate in the interagency space where the two Departments intersect. One of the major roles of the IPO is to facilitate collaboration for interagency efforts. One way we do this is through developing and maintaining a Web-based collaboration site for internal work teams to share, plan, discuss and execute the phases of Virtual Lifetime Electronic Records.

Stakeholder(s):

• Department and Veterans Affairs

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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