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John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | April 28, 2023
The VA has halted future installations of the Oracle-Cerner EHR system until its ongoing issues are resolved.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has halted the rollout of its Oracle Cerner EHR system as part of a major reset of its modernization project to address the multiple issues that have plagued staff and clinicians at sites where the solution has already been installed.
The agency called time on the project while negotiating a potential extension of the IT contract it has with Oracle Cerner, which
acquired Cerner in 2022, saying that it will not install the Millennium EHR system at any other locations until it is “highly functioning” and issues at current locations have been resolved,
according to FedScoop. No timeline has been announced for when the rollout will resume.
The VA
contracted Cerner in 2018 to create an EHR system that would provide veterans faster and seamless access to care at its more than 1,200 sites. Installed at five sites so far, the system has
experienced over 500 major incidents, including
multiple outages; functionality issues that have posed patients harm; and financial setbacks that have stretched its initial cost estimate from $10 billion to as much as $21 billion, as of May 2022.
Most recently, it experienced a five-hour disruption in which clinicians experienced latency issues and freezing, including those using the Department of Defense’s iteration of the platform,
reported FedScoop.
“We are working toward an amended contract that will hold Oracle Cerner accountable to delivering the high-functioning, high-reliability EHR system that veterans deserve and will lay the groundwork for our expectations around improvements to the system that we think are necessary,” said VA official Dr. Neil Evans during a briefing call with reporters, declining to discuss specific contract negotiations.
Last year, the agency
delayed future deployments until 2023 because of the issues.
For this most current reset, the VA says it will work with Congress on determining and acquiring resources for the project, estimating a $400 million drop in fiscal year 2023 costs, and evaluate improvements in clinician and veteran experience, performance, reliability and productivity at Spokane VA Health Care System, VA Walla Walla Health Care, Roseburg VA Health Care System, VA Southern Oregon Health Care, and VA Central Ohio Health Care System, where the system is installed.
The system will still go live in March 2024 as scheduled at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Chicago, which houses the only fully integrated VA and Department of Defense healthcare system.
