Veterans Health Administration

Veteran Interoperability Pledge

The Veteran Interoperability Pledge works toward developing a framework to allow VA and community providers to securely exchange information to assist in the care of Veterans receiving treatment inside and outside VA.

“With commitments to transfer vital information and records electronically between VA and signatory health systems, we also hope that this this pledge will make it seamless for our partner health systems to identify Veterans at the point of care,” said VA Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal. “That is inherently valuable for the Veteran receiving care, but it will also allow us to send helpful information to our partner health systems that they can then offer to Veterans in their care — to include information about new benefits we are offering under the PACT Act and other resources that assist with suicide prevention and identifying social risk factors"

– VA Under Secretary for Health, Dr. Shereef Elnahal

September 2024 Update

In September 2024, VA announced that Epic and Oracle Health customers can access VA’s Veteran API as part of the Veteran Interoperability Pledge. This enables their health system and hospital customers to identify Veterans in their care to help VA identify who may not be accessing their earned VA benefits. These two companies alone make up more than half of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) market in the United States – a major accomplishment for the Pledge that opens the door to care and benefits for potentially thousands of Veterans.

• Phase 1 has been a first successful step – as of September 2024, three of the thirteen Pledge health systems are live and confirming Veteran status for every patient seen.
  • Veterans have already been identified and provided with VA literature and resources surrounding benefits and PACT Act conditions.
  • Remaining nine pledge signers are in progress with a go-live target by end of 2024.

Next Steps

• In Phase 2, VA aims to expand on its progress by increasing engagement with more health providers that provide Veteran care.
• VA’s next steps include publishing a request for information on a potential capability to provide neutral industry support as a convenor between industry stakeholders. 

Contact

For more information, contact veteraninteroperabilitypledge@va.gov 

Veteran Interoperability Pledge

To honor America’s Veterans by providing exceptional health care that improves their health and well-being, we pledge to collaborate with the Department of Veterans Affairs in advancing technologies that improve care coordination and efficiency of care for Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors—especially in support of The Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022 and Veterans Comprehensive Prevention, Access to Care, and Treatment Act or the Veterans COMPACT Act of 2020.

Pledge signers are committed to developing and providing capabilities that support these objectives:

1. Accurately identify Veterans when they seek care from providers in our communities.
2. Connect Veterans with VA and community resources that promote health and healthcare—especially VA services that lower Veterans’ out-of-pocket expenses.
3. Responsively and reliably coordinate care for shared patients--including exchange of information about care requested and provided.

To achieve these goals, we agree to:

1. Enable health system application access to authoritative VA resources to determine Veteran status.
2. Enable automation of benefit eligibility determination and referrals.
3. Enable health system application access to identify local, state, and federal health resources.
4. Enable VA application access to health-system clinical and administrative data for quality assessment and care coordination.
5. Advance and implement federally recognized, national interoperability standards, privacy and security frameworks related to the executing the Pledge’s commitments on information exchange and use of health information.

For more information, you may contact the Veteran Interoperability Pledge team.