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Jeff E.
Thx. CSTE worked to improve national VA reporting for the NNDs. Despite a VA Directive since 2013 and renewed last year, reporting to the state or local jurisdiction remains dependent on the local VA facility's privacy officer's interpretation of the directive. Thus, the VA response will be totally facility dependent.
Brooke B.
Jeff
Tagging Jeff here since I think this conversation will be of interest to him. He has had numerous conversations surrounding VA reporting (or lack thereof) related to the corresponding CSTE position statement.
Amy D.
In New Mexico, our VA appears to be willing but unable to report. They do call us for emergent conditions but we don't envision a future where they could report via ELR. For example, they were sending HCV AB cases on a monthly basis (they were generating an excel file), but they could not generate a list of HCV genotype that included name, only SSN. Which was interesting.
Scott T.
Sarah - we have had made some headway here in MA with reporting from VA to our surveillance system. We are currently testing and hope to have this implemented soon for one of our VA's.
Sara B.
Thanks for your feedback! I asked her to still fill out the survey so we could get a baseline of where their reporting capacities lie, but let her know that I would relay her concerns to the group about the overall feasibility of the mission.
Lesliann H.
I may not be responding to basecamp in the right way, and if so, I apologize.
Please don’t let her response slow the overall effort.
· Compliance with public health reporting requirements is supported by the VA, but she probably isn’t aware of this. The VA director renews a memo supporting this collaboration every three years, but it is adhered to unevenly across the country.
· I don’t know how many VA labs send ELR to public health, but I suspect that some do.
· If the VA is not comfortable with findings being sent without review, they might use a mechanism that some other labs use, where their LIMS identifies the test results to be sent to public health and then someone reviews them and authorizes transmission.
· If there is a need to drill into this further with the VA, we have a relationship with the office that oversees coordination with public health surveillance and we might be able to facilitate a discussion.
Lesliann Helmus, MS, CHTS-CP Associate Director for Surveillance Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services CDC Office of Public Health Scientific Services Email lhelmus@cdc.gov<mailto:lhelmus@cdc.gov> | Phone 404-498-0167 | Fax 404-498-6235
Sara B.
I invited one of our local VA labs to take the survey. Interesting feedback I received just now "I read through the questions on the survey and even talked to our Lab IT folks and the bottom line is: The VA will never allow any information to go from our computer system to another one. Even just the Limsnet doesn’t meet the Phipps compliant standards and that is just us sending you and very very small amount of information. They will never allow any reports to be generated and go directly to an outside agency."
