VA to share patient mortality data from EHR with CDC

Two government agencies are working to improve public health surveillance by advancing how quickly deaths are recorded and reported.

Under the new partnership between the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the VA will integrate patient mortality data from its electronic health record system to support the CDC’s Modernizing Death Reporting project, an effort to increase the speed, quality and interoperability of information that is captured and reported.

“Delivering data directly to CDC’s systems in this manner underscores VA’s commitment to a modern interoperability strategy,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie in a written statement. “We look forward to future opportunities to enhance our partnerships and champion interoperability across the federal government.”

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“VA’s collaboration with CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics marks a shift in the way that mortality data has traditionally been provided, increasing the speed of data transmission and mitigating any loss of data value due to decreased interoperability,” according to the announcement.

Specifically, the agency touts the benefits of open Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources-based application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable this data sharing.

“To that end, VA is committed to working collaboratively to expand available FHIR resources and their utilization,” states the agency. “Using FHIR-based standards increases the value of this mortality data, as data is provided more quickly, enabling faster analysis and the delivery of more timely healthcare interventions.”

According the CDC, the FHIR standards can improve mortality data transmission processes, from death certification through submission to the National Center for Health Statistics, as well as the return of coded records to the submitting jurisdiction.

At last year’s National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems annual meeting, a FHIR For Death Reporting application—which uses SMART on FHIR—was demonstrated.

In the demonstration, the app was launched from within an Epic EHR system, loading a decedent’s medical history by leveraging FHIR, filling out the decedent’s cause of death, and then submitting the death record to the Utah Electronic Death Entry Network electronic death registration system.