Veterans Affairs receives $1.8B to move forward with Oracle-Cerner’s EHR rollout
After securing $1.8 billion in funding, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will soon move forward with Oracle-Cerner in rolling out a new electronic health records system for its 171 national medical centers, according to Nextgov.
The funding is part of $300 billion earmarked for the VA through the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, passed by Congress Dec. 23, 2022. While the original government contract—an agreement to upgrade the EHR in a manner compatible with Department of Defense health records—was made with Cerner, the company was acquired by Oracle last June for more than $28 billion.
The EHR project’s continuation had previously been uncertain after VA officials noted the considerable obstacles to its completion, including technical issues and high costs. Last year, the new system was plagued by multiple setbacks that caused the VA to pause its implementation.
Namely, one incident flagged by the VA Inspector General’s office as particularly egregious found that 11,000 orders for lab work and other specialty care had “gone missing” after being electronically routed to an unknown queue. The error took place at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Washington—the first VA medical center to go live with the system.
After the Inspector General’s report highlighting that incident, further system rollouts at new locations were delayed until early 2023. In June, Congress even passed the VA Electronic Health Record Transparency Act for more oversight over the project, and in October its rollout was delayed again until June 2023.
Now, with freshly approved funding, the project seems to be back on track and is currently developing an updated schedule for the system’s deployment.