Epic, Oracle assist VA with interoperability push

The Veterans Affairs Department said Tuesday it has partnered with EHR companies Epic and Oracle Health to identify veterans receiving care outside of the VA.

Oracle and Epic, the top two companies in total market share among EHR vendors for acute care hospitals, have added the VA's Veteran Confirmation application programming interface to their systems. The API will help providers identify veterans receiving care in their health systems. 

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The VA announced the connections with Epic and Oracle at Health Datapalooza, an event focused on partnerships between health systems and public health entities. Both EHR companies say they will make the APIs free for their health system customers. APIs allow developers to connect disparate tech systems while keeping pertinent data secure.

"Because we've set this up with EHR vendors as a main partner, we want to minimize the work and the financial investment that health systems have to put into this," said Dr. Shereef Elnahal, undersecretary for health at the VA. "The lower the barrier to entry on identifying veterans and delivering them services, the more likely we'll see adoption."

In October 2023, the VA launched this initiative with 13 health systems joining its interoperability pledge. Three of the 13 have begun using the API, which are Burlington, Massachusetts-based Tufts Medicine, Sioux Falls, South Dakota based-Sanford Health and Marshfield, Wisconsin-based Marshfield Clinic, according to the VA.

In a LinkedIn post, Elnahal said a fourth health system, Oakland, California-based Kaiser Permanente, plans to go live with the API this week. A spokesperson for the agency said the other nine health systems included in the original pledge were expected to go live by the end of the year.

Representatives from Tufts Medicine and Sanford Health confirmed the API is live at their systems. Representatives from Marshfield Clinic and Kaiser Permanente have not responded to a request for comment.