Senate Appropriations Committee approves funding VA for interoperable EHR, telemedicine, claims processing systems

Healthcare IT News: The U.S. Senate approved a bill that would give the Veterans Affairs Department a total of $83 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal year 2017, including money for an interoperable electronic health record, telemedicine efforts and a paperless claims processing system.

The Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, also known as MilCon-VA, provides $3.1 billion more than last year’s funding, including $260 million for modernizing its electronic health record system, $180 million for a paperless claims processing system, $143 million for the digital scanning of health records, and $1.17 billion for telemedicine.

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