News Release

The U.S. Coast Guard's Health, Safety and Work-Life Directorate Monday announced an Interagency Agreement with the Department of State to share an Integrated Health Information System (IHiS), which includes a commercial electronic health record, Epic.™

This unique agreement provides substantial benefits to both agencies, including efficiencies generated by leveraging joint purchasing power and allowing the Coast Guard and the Department of State to share resources. It also will significantly increase the interoperability of healthcare information within the federal government and the private sector, a critical component of healthcare reform.

This collaboration leverages the Coast Guard's initial health care systems investment while sharing life-cycle costs with the Department of State, generating immediate and long-term economic benefits. Coast Guard medical clinics nationwide will be able to access Coast Guard personnel medical records from a central database instead of having to transfer paper records from different locations. The Department of State will share this main server to support its medical records database and will provide its back-up system for use by the entire records database.

Under the provisions of the agreement, clinicians for the Coast Guard and the Department of State also will have access to the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record, the unified health record for active and former members of the U.S. armed services and to the Nationwide Health Information Network.

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