Innovative, ambitious and award winning, all words used to describe VAs personal medical record, MyHealtheVet (MHV), a web health portal launched nationwide on Veterans Day 2003. Celebrating its fifth anniversary at the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center, MyHealtheVet will expand a number of features to enhance patient provider relationships.
MyHealtheVet is more than access to online health information and a gateway to online benefits and services; MyHealtheVet enhances veterans communication with their primary health care team and allows them to become active partners in their health care across the nation. Currently, VA has embarked on more than 500,000 My HealtheVet users nationwide. On a local level, West Palm VA Medical Center has identified more than 7,000 veterans that have self-enrolled and are utilizing My HealtheVet. MyHealtheVets online VA prescription refills are a popular feature for many veterans. The West Palm Beach VA currently processes over 2500 prescription refills monthly through My HealtheVet.
After many years of research, MyHealtheVet has a new organizational scheme to make it easier for veterans to manage their health online. For example, health statistics such as blood pressure and cholesterol are available in a section called Track Health. Personal information such as a veterans registration profile and emergency contacts are located in the personal information section. Health care related records such as treatment locations and health care providers are in a new section called Get Care. Graphing has now been added to the health statistics. This allows veterans to see graphs of their own blood pressure, blood sugar, body weight records and more. Most veterans have reported that having access to their medical records online has improved their patient satisfaction and enhances their quality health care.
MyHealtheVet currently contains data entered by health care consumers, both veterans and employees, who harnessed the power of online access to health care information. As the West Palm Beach VA celebrates five years of online access, veterans can look forward to accessing key portions of their medical record, extracted into the patient personal health record. This can simply occur with the patient requesting an MHV account upgrade-called In-Person Authentication (IPA).
In the near future, patients will be able to delegate access to one or all parts of their record to another person (such as a health care provider, family member or advocate).
Secure messaging is an additional feature that veterans will soon be able to access, anytime, anywhere to VA health care staff. This new online tool will allow registered MyHealtheVet users with account upgrades to correspond directly with their primary health care providers. Veterans will be able to communicate non-urgent and non-emergent issues with their health care, that have the potential to integrate into their existing electronic health record, which health care providers see as part of VAs Computerized Patient Record System.
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