Also, with Veterans Choice, I don't know how much there was an effort to bring this data back. Same thing with the DoD, for a while there was an agreement to send medical records for active duty to the VA, but then that got pulled for a time.
I believe there was a huge undertaking to consolidate these to fewer systems in the last few years, but Vista[0] (the VA's EMR) is pretty scary. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
The file format itself seems like a bit tough to parse, but the concept I love.
why do you say that? From a doctor's perspective, Vista is one of the more user friendly EMRs.
EDIT: Still a win I suppose if it improves care delivery over the status quo. Nice to know there's still some progress on this front [1] [2]. Looks like I owe OpenEMR a financial contribution.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25040076
[2] https://playbook.cio.gov/#play13 (Digital services playbook: Default to open)
I would like to see the US Digital Service continue to task technologists with improving EMR systems at CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), but made free to use by all practitioners and citizens (and of course, open sourcing the resulting codebase). It seems sort of inefficient we keep reinventing the wheel (Epic and the like, which are crazy expensive, or self hosted solutions, when practitioners should not be spending time maintaining EMRs), when your records should be stored for your benefit by your government over the course of your life. This is where, imho, high calibre engineers provide the most leverage (one way ratchets on public goods at scale).
[1] https://www.usds.gov/resources/USDS-Impact-Report-2020.pdf
[2] https://www.va.gov/health-care/get-medical-records/