The use of information technology (IT) to electronically collect, store, retrieve, and transfer clinical, administrative, and financial health information has great potential to help improve the quality and efficiency of health care. Historically, patient health information has been scattered across paper records kept by many different caregivers in many different locations, making it difficult for a clinician to access all of a patient’s health information at the time of care. Lacking access to these critical data, a clinician may be challenged to make the most informed decisions on treatment options, potentially putting the patient’s health at greater risk. The use of electronic health records can help provide this access and improve clinical decisions. Electronic health records are particularly crucial for optimizing the health care provided to military personnel and veterans. While in military status and later as veterans, many VA and DOD patients tend to be highly mobile and may have health records residing at multiple medical facilities within and outside the United States. Making such records electronic can help ensure that complete health care information is available for most military service members and veterans at the time and place of care, no matter where it originates. Although they have identified many common health care business needs, both departments have spent large sums of money to develop and operate separate electronic health record systems that they rely on to create and manage patient health information. VA uses its integrated medical information system—the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA)—which was developed in-house by VA clinicians and IT personnel. The system consists of 104 separate computer applications, including 56 health provider applications; 19 management and financial applications; 8 registration, enrollment, and eligibility applications; 5 health data applications; and 3 information and education applications. Besides being numerous, these applications have been customized at all 128 VA sites. According to the department, this customization increases the cost of maintaining the system, as it requires that maintenance also be customized. In 2001, the Veterans Health Administration undertook an initiative to modernize VistA by standardizing patient data and modernizing the health information software applications. In doing so, its goal was to move from the hospital-centric environment that had long characterized the department’s health care operations to a veteran-centric environment built on an open, robust systems architecture that would more efficiently provide both the same functions and benefits of the existing system and enhanced functions based on computable data. VA planned to take an incremental approach to the initiative, based on six phases that were to be completed in 2018. The department reported spending almost $600 million from 2001 to 2007 on eight projects, including an effort that resulted in a repository containing selected standardized health data, as part of the effort to modernize VistA. In April 2008, the department estimated an $11 billion total cost to complete, by 2018, the modernization that was planned at that time. However, according to VA officials, the modernization effort was terminated in August 2010. For its part, DOD relies on its Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application (AHLTA), which comprises multiple legacy medical information systems that the department developed from commercial software products that were customized for specific uses. For example, the Composite Health Care System (CHCS), which was formerly DOD’s primary health information system, is still in use to capture information related to pharmacy, radiology, and laboratory order management. In addition, the department uses Essentris (also called the Clinical Information System), a commercial health information system customized to support inpatient treatment at military medical facilities. DOD obligated approximately $2 billion for AHLTA between 1997 and 2010. The department initiated efforts to improve system performance and enhance functionality and planned to continue its efforts to stabilize the AHLTA system through 2015 as a “bridge” to the new electronic health record system it intended to acquire. According to DOD, the planned new electronic health record system—known as the EHR Way Ahead—was to be the department’s comprehensive, real-time health record for service members and their families and beneficiaries. In January 2010, the department initiated an analysis of alternatives for meeting system capability requirements it had identified. A key goal for sharing health information among providers, such as between VA’s and DOD’s health care systems, is achieving interoperability. Interoperability enables different information systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. Interoperability can be achieved at different levels. At the highest level, electronic data are computable (that is, in a format that a computer can understand and act to, for example, provide alerts to clinicians on drug allergies). At a lower level, electronic data are structured and viewable, but not computable. The value of data at this level is that they are structured so that data of interest to users are easier to find. At a still lower level, electronic data are unstructured and viewable, but not computable. With unstructured electronic data, a user would have to find needed or relevant information by searching uncategorized data. Beyond these, paper records can also be considered interoperable (at the lowest level) because they allow data to be shared, read, and interpreted by human beings. However, they do not provide decision support capabilities, such as automatic alerts about a particular patient’s health, or other reported advantages of automation. We have previously reported that all data may not require the same level of interoperability, nor is interoperability at the highest level achievable in all cases. For example, unstructured, viewable data may be sufficient for such narrative information as clinical notes. Interoperability allows patients’ electronic health information to move with them from provider to provider, regardless of where the information originated. If electronic health records conform to interoperability standards, they can be created, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff across more than one health care organization, thus providing patients and their caregivers the necessary information required for optimal care. Interoperability depends on the use of agreed-upon standards to ensure that information can be shared and used. In the health IT field, standards may govern areas ranging from technical issues, such as file types and interchange systems, to content issues, such as medical terminology. Since 1998, VA and DOD have relied on a patchwork of initiatives involving their health information systems to achieve electronic health record interoperability. These have included efforts to share viewable data in existing (legacy) systems; link and share computable data between the departments’ modernized health data repositories; establish and address interoperability objectives to meet specific data-sharing needs; develop a virtual lifetime electronic health record to track patients through active service and veteran status; and implement IT capabilities for the first joint federal health care center. While these initiatives have collectively yielded increased data sharing in various capacities, a number of them have nonetheless been plagued by persistent management challenges, which have created barriers to achieving the fully interoperable electronic health record capabilities long sought. Among the departments’ earliest efforts to achieve interoperability was the Government Computer-Based Patient Record (GCPR) initiative, which was begun in 1998 with the intent of providing an electronic interface that would allow physicians and other authorized users of VA’s and DOD’s health facilities to access data from the other agency’s health facilities. The interface was expected to compile requested patient health information in a temporary, “virtual” record that could be displayed on a user’s computer screen. However, in reporting on this initiative in April 2001, we found that accountability for GCPR was blurred across several management entities and that basic principles of sound IT project planning, development, and oversight had not been followed, creating barriers to progress. For example, clear goals and objectives had not been set; detailed plans for the design, implementation, and testing of the interface had not been developed; and critical decisions were not binding on all partners. While both departments concurred with our recommendations that they, among other things, create comprehensive and coordinated plans for the effort, progress on the initiative continued to be disappointing. The departments subsequently revised the strategy for GCPR and, in May 2002, narrowed the scope of the initiative to focus on enabling DOD to electronically transfer service members’ health information to VA upon their separation from active duty. The initiative— renamed the Federal Health Information Exchange (FHIE)—was completed in 2004. Building on FHIE, VA and DOD also established the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange (BHIE) in 2004, which was aimed at allowing clinicians at both departments viewable access to records on shared patients (that is, those who receive care from both departments, such as veterans who receive outpatient care from VA clinicians and then are hospitalized at a military treatment facility). The interface also enabled DOD sites to see previously inaccessible data at other DOD sites. Further, in March 2004, the departments began an effort to develop an interface linking VA’s Health Data Repository and DOD’s Clinical Data Repository, as part of a long-term initiative to achieve the two-way exchange of health information between the departments’ modernized systems—known as the Clinical Data Repository/Health Data Repository initiative, or CHDR. The departments had planned to be able to exchange selected health information through CHDR by October 2005. However, in June 2004, we reported that the efforts of VA and DOD in this area demonstrated a number of management weaknesses. Among these were the lack of a well-defined architecture for describing the interface for a common health information exchange, an established project management lead entity and structure to guide the investment in the interface and its implementation, and a project management plan defining the technical and managerial processes necessary to satisfy project requirements. Accordingly, we recommended that the departments address these weaknesses, and they agreed to do so. In September 2005, we testified that the departments had improved the management of the CHDR program, but that this program continued to face significant challenges—in particular, with developing a project management plan of sufficient specificity to be an effective guide for the program.