Department of Defense Health System Connects with Oklahoma HIE

Coordinated Care Oklahoma (CCO) announced this week it is the first health information exchange (HIE) on Cerner technology to connect with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

CCO’s HIE serves medical professional and patients in five states—Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas and Kansas. And, according to a press release, subscribers to the CCO HIE will be able to access the health records of military personnel, retired military personnel and their families either on base or off base and at facilities throughout the member network.

Currently there are 22,000 active duty military personnel in Oklahoma. These members of our nation's armed forces are supported by 23,000 civilians at military installations across the state. All of these records are now available to CCO members as of June 28, 2016, according to the press release.

“What's exciting and unique about this implementation is the collaborative effort that went into it,” says Brian Yeaman, M.D. and CAO at Coordinated Care Oklahoma. “This involved high level talks, but started locally more than a year ago, and the end results will very much be felt in local impact.”

“Our mantra is ‘Ease of Use’,” Yeaman says. “We have a proven ability to provide accurate, up-to-date, secure and reliable health records to our subscribers at Coordinated Care Oklahoma. Up until this point, military personnel and their families were covered as it pertains to electronic health records in a sort of duplicate system and then only within base medical installations.”

 “In Oklahoma we have a high number of active duty military and retired military personnel,” says Yeaman. “We wanted to bridge the gap and serve this group. CCO provides the link between hospitals, clinics and private physician practices statewide with this patient base of 45,000.”

The CCO’s technology platform is a joint venture between Cerner and Browersoft. Initial talks and implementation were made possible through the work of team members at CCO, Cerner, Browsersoft and Fort Sill.