VHIE DATA QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

Data Quality:  A five year effort for the VHA VHIE office for Clinical Data Quality Improvement for interoperability  (Data Exchange) and Clinical Decision Support.  We perform strategic planning, UAT work,  C-CDA requirements analysis,  and clinical data quality analysis and improvement services for the Joint DoD - VA Health Information Exchange (JHIE) .  We examine incoming and outgoing data in JHIE to determine if data is being  delivered and interpreted accurately between the VHA,  Cerner Millennium, DoD, and community provider partners.

"The Veterans Health Information Exchange (VHIE) Clinical Data Quality (CDQ) team works diligently to ensure quality clinical data is exchanged seamlessly to support patient safety and care coordination. There are times when patient data can be incorrectly recorded in electronic health record (EHR) systems, which can lead to an inability to match patients when exchanging data externally. This can lead to detrimental consequences for patients through inaccurate patient data. Although clinicians can often catch these inconsistencies, there is still a vital need to improve the quality of clinical patient data for clarity and consistency in patient care.

VHIE recently discovered two real-life examples that illustrate how poor-quality clinical data could negatively impact patients.

Veteran Doe was misdiagnosed while experiencing a medical emergency due to an incorrect prescription dosage in his medical records. When Veteran Doe was admitted into the nearest Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), his physician noticed that his medication dosage in the EHR did not match what was previously prescribed, discovering that the prescription dosage was incorrect in the system and needed to be reduced.

Veteran Jones was feeling ill and made a visit to his Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) physician. Due to inaccuracies in the patient’s identifying traits for patient matching, preventing the internal system from communicating with the external system, the VA physician was unable to access the patient’s health records from his external provider. These delayed efforts in providing coordinated care for Veteran Jones and caused the VA physician to repeat labs that were already performed by the external provider.

These are the kinds of problems that the CDQ team strives to solve while embodying the VA’s mission to be a high reliability organization (HRO)."