Google’s mission is ambitious: to organize the world’s information and, over the past 15 years, the company has done a pretty good job.
On the day before Memorial Day, it is fair to ask why after years of work the U.S. military has failed to develop a unified system to organize the medical records of the nation’s warriors.
U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud “expressed disappointment” last week when the Department of Defense announced it will buy a separate record-keeping system than the one used by the Veterans Administration.
The Affordable Care Act is forcing the nation’s civilian hospitals to develop electronic records systems.
Some Mainers have probably noticed that they can now go from doctor to doctor or hospital to hospital and everything from x-rays to medical histories are available on any computer monitor.
The goal of that program is to cut down on errors and delays by making sure complete medical records are available to all providers at all times.
So, wouldn’t it make sense for the DOD and the VA to develop a similar record-keeping system capable of following veterans from the day they enter the military until the day they die?
The VA has faced criticism for years for its inability to process claims for sick, disabled or elderly veterans.
Congress recently heard testimony that 81 percent of the 16,600 disability claims at the VA’s Baltimore office are more than 125 days old, according the Baltimore Sun. In addition to being slow, the error rate in that office is about 26 percent.
That means it takes the VA more than four months to make a decision on a claim and, when it does, one of four of those decisions is the wrong one, at least at the Baltimore office.
Officials at a VA office in Winston-Salem, N.C., recently requested an engineering study because the records stored there were causing the floor to sag.
The VA reported that 37,000 files were stored on top of file cabinets already packed with records. Box loads of records also lined the walls of the room. In some places, file cabinets were stacked so closely that the file drawers couldn’t even open completely.
Meanwhile, the separate Department of Defense record-keeping system for active-duty personnel is similarly outdated and notorious for long delays and lost records.
The longest delays occur when the two systems try working together, as they must. The VA often relies on active-duty military records to establish the legitimacy of disability claims.
VA doctors should be able to see how a soldier, now a civilian, was injured and the treatment he or she received in the military without waiting months or relying on paper records stashed on a shelf in some distant archive.
When it wants, the Pentagon is capable of doing remarkable things with technology. It can build drones that circle the world controlled by pilots on the ground thousands of miles away and it can put nuclear subs under the seas for months at a time.
Both agencies need to go back to the drawing board and put similar money and determination behind a unified health-care record-keeping system that works.
Maybe Google can help.
rrhoades@sunjournal.com
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