“The Department of Veterans Affairs’ $16 billion medical records modernization project is facing new scrutiny just a month after a much-touted software rollout at a VA facility in Spokane, Wash.”
“One of the department’s unions says it didn’t get advance warning the new system would be activated at a VA facility in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, groups within the department are questioning the technical capabilities of the project and who’s managing it. And internal reviews are raising concerns about some important, data-sharing technical capabilities, along with its management structure…”
“The department is reviewing a patient portal for veterans, John Windom, the VA’s leader of the Office of EHR Modernization, told POLITICO. Veterans service organizations and members of Congress have argued the project would disrupt a familiar product that patients have come to rely on for tasks like refilling prescriptions and scheduling medical appointments.”
“And earlier this month VA leadership issued a memo calling for an assessment of many of the data-sharing capabilities of the project, including “data syndication,” which refers to the ability of information from other VA and Department of Defense systems to flow into VA databases. Such an assessment should have been completed years ago, observers from outside the department say…”
“Those moving parts start at the Las Vegas accounts center, an administrative office assisting western VA centers with billing and administrative issues. Because the center assists Spokane as part of that mission, it, too, got a Cerner rollout: specifically, billing software to assist VA with its payments to private-sector health providers.”
“But the American Federation of Government Employees, whose members work at the center, say the rollout hasn’t gone as advertised at the facility…” Read the full article here.
Source: VA’s digital health project faces new scrutiny from union, groups inside agency – By Darius Tahir, December 29, 2020. POLITICO.
