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[quote]President Obama announced plans on Thursday to computerize the medical records of veterans into a unified system, a move that is expected to ease the now-cumbersome process that results in confusion, lost records and bureaucratic delays.

Medical information will flow directly from the military to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ health care system. At present, veterans must hand carry their medical records to Veterans Affairs’ facilities once they leave active-duty service. The Veterans Affairs system has a backlog of 800,000 disability claims, which means that veterans typically wait six months for decisions on their cases.

The task of creating a unified system will be handled by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. The undertaking has repeatedly confounded the two agencies in the past, and it remains unclear how long the project will take and how much it will cost.

Both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki joined Mr. Obama for the announcement, but provided no details.

“We have a sacred trust with those who wear the uniform of the United States of America, a commitment that begins with enlistment and must never end,â€

As a vet who's currently going through this whole ordeal, it very much needs to be updated and better managed. As it stands now they've started outsourcing most of their appointments and exams to third party companies due to backlogs, which creates even more problems due to miscommunications, loss of data, etc.

For instance, I was informed last Thursday that I had an appointment this monday and they were calling to confirm it...first I had heard about it. But I was suppose to be told over two weeks ago. Never happened.

A centralized system is a definate step in the right direction but I think even this article understates the problems that this is going to create trying to figure out how the hell to do it. And any time you're doing a mass database build using physical records and converting them to electronic copies, especially when you're looking at the tune of several MILLION of those records, you're going to have lots of errors. A fuckton of them. And that'll take months, years or decades to sort all of them out, if they ever are.

So yeah, I hope it gets done and it would sure as hell help a lot of people, but I also realize it's not going to happen anytime soon and will cause a ton of chaos and fuckups all on its own. So, really, I don't know which way to lean with it.

Honestly though, not digitizing the records because there will be errors makes no sense if there's already errors now. I am not a veteran, and thus am unable to speak with authority about the system as it stands or as it will stand, but it would seem to me to be the sort of thing we should do sooner rather than later.

Just a layman's view.

As someone working at a place that is rapidly attempting to digitize over a hundred years worth of records, I can understand the problems. It is a huge undertaking.

However... with properly trained people, proper equipment that is kept functional, and a fine set of checks and error-catching, it can be done. In three years we have digitized 90yrs worth of birth, death, and marriage certificates, while keeping current records updated as well. In the last 2 years, we have started digitizing and archiving the microfilm records as well, where the births before 1919 are kept. That is meeting a few hiccups, but it is also slowly getting done.

So... if the VA and DoD wants a few suggestions, perhaps they should speak to the State Vital Records offices of various states and get a few hints on how to go modern on budget and in a timely, efficient manner. When a State Office can go in 9 years from photocopies and hand-written, hand-sorted orders to a fully digitized and computer-assisted order management system that does everything but put the certificates in the envelopes, that's a huge accomplishment!

Don't get me wrong, anyone who knows me knows I support any effort to computerize just about anything, regardless if it is a worthwhile effort or not.

I just realize that in the process of doing this for millions of veterans across the country for the last god knows how many years is going to be a massive insanely detailed undertaking that is going to result in a lot of problems in and of itself which may or may not be better or worse than the problems already existing.

I still support the innitiative and think its a good idea. I was simply just trying to state that it's going to be a problematic thing and I'm not sure how I really feel about that considering I'm going through this whole thing right now.