ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. -- Expedited access to patient medical records is one anticipated benefit of the Tullahoma Veterans Affairs Clinic expansion here.
When active-duty Airmen utilize an off-base civilian primary care provider, the medical administrative teams at Arnold must manually request records via fax or the Airman must physically obtain and deliver the records, says Tech. Sgt. Ethan Cross, Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of Health Services Management at Arnold AFB. This, Cross said, slows the care process and creates an “administrative burden,” leading to delays in an Airman’s medical readiness.
When a VA provider is used, medical records are entered into VA’s patient records system, which is directly connected to the Joint Longitudinal Viewer (JLV), Cross said. The JLV is a Department of War-wide web-based application that provides a consolidated, read-only view of a military member’s health records.
“Assigning active-duty personnel to a primary care manager at the VA Clinic significantly improves our medical readiness,” Cross said. “Medical records become immediately and electronically available to our medical administrative teams here at Arnold, as well as the 96th Medical Group, our host Medical Treatment Facility, eliminating delays and administrative burdens associated with off-base providers.”
Because the VA is connected to the JLV, a service member’s complete medical history can be instantly accessed, thereby reducing the administrative workload created by faxes and manual records requests. This also improves the speed and accuracy of medical readiness assessments and decreases the likelihood of duplicative medical procedures.
“Faster access to information allows for quicker and more informed decisions regarding a service member’s health and deployment status. This streamlined process ensures that our personnel are medically ready to meet mission requirements with greater efficiency,” Cross said.
The assignment of VA primary care providers to military members will also benefit members approaching retirement or separation, particularly when they begin to file a VA disability claim.
“These retiring and separating members would have most all their records available from the one source, and generating their record copies would be much easier,” Cross said.