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HHS Welcomes VA and Defense Health to TEFCA to Unify Care for Millions of Veterans and Service Members

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HHS Welcomes VA and Defense Health to TEFCA to Unify Care for Millions of Veterans and Service Members

Federal Data Fabric: VA and Defense Join TEFCA to Establish Unified Health Record Exchange Across Military, Veteran, and Community Care

In federal healthcare and military readiness, patient care continuity has long struggled with fragmented transitions of care. When active-duty warfighters transition from military service into the Veterans Health Administration system, or when service members and veterans seek specialized or emergency treatment from civilian community providers through programs like the VA MISSION Act and TRICARE, their electronic health records have historically traversed disconnected networks, proprietary health information exchange gateways, or paper-based records requests. This structural fragmentation introduces clinical latency, complicates disability claims processing, risks duplicated diagnostic testing, and creates blind spots during acute medical reconciliations.

Unifying military, veteran, and civilian clinical data within the nation’s single interoperability backbone, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of War (Department of Defense) have officially joined the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). The expansion marks a foundational milestone in federal health IT policy, directly linking military treatment facilities and VA medical centers into the nationwide network-of-networks governed by ONC and the Recognized Coordinating Entity.

The accession of the VA and defense healthcare branches into TEFCA establishes a unified, standards-based operational bridge across government and commercial clinical IT ecosystems. Overseen by the Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization office, both the VA and military health operations have standardized clinical workflows around a common modern electronic health record core.


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