WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced the recent start of a new partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve public health surveillance data.

Specifically, VA will support CDC’s Modernizing Death Reporting project by integrating patient mortality data from VA’s Electronic Health Record, or EHR, system.

A component of vital statistics, mortality data provides a critical view of the overall health of the nation. Moreover, mortality data identifies important variables for those dying in the U.S., assisting with the modeling of population life expectancy and cross-comparisons for health factors.

VA’s collaboration with CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics marks a shift in the way that mortality data has traditionally been provided, increasing the speed of data transmission and mitigating any loss of data value due to decreased interoperability.

VA believes that open, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources-based Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) form an essential component of a modern interoperability strategy.

To that end, VA is committed to working collaboratively to expand available Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR, and their utilization.

CDC has been hard at work to increase the speed, quality and interoperability of mortality data captured and reported, and this new collaboration with VA further enables the advancement of this important work.

“Delivering data directly to CDC’s systems in this manner underscores VA’s commitment to a modern interoperability strategy,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “We look forward to future opportunities to enhance our partnerships and champion interoperability across the federal government.”

Using FHIR-based standards increases the value of this mortality data, as data is provided more quickly, enabling faster analysis and the delivery of more timely healthcare interventions.

For more information on VA’s partnership with CDC, visit https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/modernization/index.htm.