The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to bring its new Federal Electronic Health Records system to nine more medical centers in 2026 than previously announced, VA officials said earlier this month.
The program, which has suffered multiple setbacks since it was first introduced in the Pacific Northwest in late 2020, was to restart at four sites in Michigan in 2026. However, following meetings between the VA, medical center personnel and Oracle Health, the company that designed the system, more sites will be added in locations that will be determined following an in-depth analysis, according to the VA.
“We can and will move faster on this important priority. But we’re going to listen to our doctors, nurses and vendor partners along the way in order to ensure patient safety, quality and customer service,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement.
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The VA contracted with Cerner, now part of Oracle Health, in 2018 to build an electronic health records system that was fully integrated with the Department of Defense’s program, also developed by Cerner/Oracle Health.
The program was first introduced at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, in 2020 and later rolled out to four additional sites, but problems with prescription management, scheduling and general usage arose, prompting the VA to pause further adoption.
A review by the VA Office of Inspector General found that the system, estimated to cost $16 billion over 10 years, harmed 149 patients in at least one facility, including a mental health patient with suicidal thoughts whose psychiatry referral became lost.
A complete pause was announced in April 2023 to fix issues at the sites and make improvements. According to the VA, the upgraded program has been more reliable and suffered fewer outages than the initial product.
Last year, the VA and Defense Department successfully deployed the system at the James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, Illinois.
Collins said the new adoption timeline, which is expected to be complete across the VA’s 171 medical centers as early as 2031, was the result of getting “both parties in a room” and discussing the issues.
“We were spending too much time trying to make exceptions to everything, instead of getting to the real root of 80% to 90% all standardized, but we were stopping on all these [other things]. We’re going to also start doubling up our work,” Collins said during an interview March 11.
The Government Accountability Office issued a report Wednesday showing that more than two-thirds of users did not believe that the program made them as “efficient as possible,” although the 75% who expressed this dissatisfaction was lower than in 2022, when 89% said it did not improve their efficiency.
The GAO recommended that the VA follow its previous guidance for reducing risk and ensuring it receives a quality system. The recommendations included conducting an updated total life cycle cost estimate and identifying performance targets for established metrics used to measure program and system performance.
“Finalizing the lone remaining metric’s baseline and target can provide department leadership with important information of program performance,” GAO analysts wrote, referring to a measure for resolving change requests.
Collins acknowledged that users have had challenges with the system but added that “change is always difficult” and they would “love it once they get it.”
“Not a doctor or nurse that works in our facilities could walk out and leave the VA and go to a facility that doesn’t have an electronic health record system that is not modernized and productive, so we’re just bringing the system back into where it needs to be,” Collins said.
“Why? Because my veterans deserve it.”
Related: VA’s Electronic Health Records System May Require Lots of New Staff. The Cost Worries Lawmakers.
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