The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) implementation of the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER): Findings and lessons learned from Health Information Exchange at 12 sites

•VLER Health, a pioneer in HIE, made great strides in advancing HIE and standards.•Mixed methods approach provided insightful, real-world HIE implementation lessons.•Clinicians reported high perceived value, trust, and experience with VLER Health.•Veterans reported high perceived value and few barriers/concerns about VLER HIE.•Clinicians will sustain VLER Health use as data availability and quality improve.

PurposeWe describe the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Virtual Lifetime Health Electronic Record (VLER) pilot phase in 12 communities to exchange health information with private sector health care organizations and the Department of Defense (DoD), key findings, lessons, and implications for advancing Health Information Exchanges (HIE), nationally.MethodsA mixed methods approach was used to monitor and evaluate the status of VLER Health Exchange pilot phase implementation from December 2009 through October 2012. Selected accomplishments, contributions, challenges, and early lessons that are relevant to the growth of nationwide HIE are discussed.ResultsVeteran patient and provider acceptance, trust, and perceived value of VLER Health Exchange are found to be high, and usage by providers is steadily growing. Challenges and opportunities to improve provider use are identified, such as better data quality and integration with workflow. Key findings and lessons for advancing HIE are identified.ConclusionsVLER Health Exchange has made great strides in advancing HIE nationally by addressing important technical and policy issues that have impeded scalability, and by increasing trust and confidence in the value and accuracy of HIE among users. VLER Health Exchange has advanced HIE interoperability standards and patient consent policies nationally. Policy, programmatic, technology, and health Information Technology (IT) standards implications to advance HIE for improved delivery and coordination of health care are discussed. The pilot phase success led to VA-wide deployment of this data sharing capability in 2013.