Veterans Health Administration Experience with Data Quality Surveillance of Continuity of Care Documents: Interoperability Challenges for eHealth Exchange Participants.

As part of ongoing data quality efforts authors monitored health information retrieved through the United States Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) Health operation. Health data exchanged through the eHealth Exchange (managed by Healtheway, Inc.) between VA and external care providers was evaluated in order to test methods of data quality surveillance and to identify key quality concerns. Testing evaluated transition of care data from 20 VLER Health partners. Findings indicated operational monitoring discovers issues not addressed during onboarding testing, that many issues result from specification ambiguity, and that many issues require human review. We make recommendations to address these issues, specifically to embed automated testing tools within information exchange transactions and to continuously monitor and improve data quality, which will facilitate adoption and use.