Benefits of the worldwide government computer-based patient record framework.

The G-CPR organization composed of the DoD, VA, IHS, and the LSUMC presents an opportunity to facilitate the exchange of clinical data across existing healthcare information systems with new business practices. The organization's ability to reengineer existing healthcare delivery processes through the G-CPR framework will improve the sharing of information and will ultimately provide for better-quality healthcare, improved access to care, greater cost efficiencies, and enhanced medical readiness of the DoD healthcare beneficiaries. The projected benefits that are by-products of the organization sharing effort tend to be focused in two broad categories: improving access to clinical data and creating a mechanism to gather information across large clinical populations. Both of the two categories include various benefits that accrue to members of the organization relative to their ability to use the G-CPR framework as a business reengineering tool. As information management processes are refined through reengineering initiatives, benefits will be observed at multiple program levels--from the DoD enterprise level down to the operational level at individual treatment facilities. Using comprehensive data to quantify precise benefits and ROI strategies is difficult because the development of the G-CPR framework is still in its early stage. Formal performance-based outcome studies are envisioned to demonstrate these results once the G-CPR framework attains greater functional definition. Through the future development of benefits performance metrics, these benefits can be shown to have substantial impact on achieving the strategic goals of the MHS and the organization while helping to improve the cost and quality of healthcare, access to care, and the medical readiness posture within the DoD.