“Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough told Congress he still believed the department could meet its initial $16 billion, 10-year budget and timeline for implementing Cerner’s Millennium electronic health record suite, despite multiple delays and problems with the modernization effort at its first go-live site.
VA last week announced a three-month pause to review the status of the electronic health record modernization program, which the department deployed to its first site last fall in Spokane, Washington.
‘If our review shows anything to suggest that the current deployment of the system or the contract requires us to move forward even if our practitioners are not able to use it to help vets or it’s not increasing outcomes for our vets, then I’ll be the first one back up there to say this thing is not working and we need to re-look [at] the whole thing,’ McDonough told the House Veterans Affairs Committee Thursday.
‘I don’t think that’s what we’re going to find, but if we do find that then I’m going to be the first one up to there to say to you that this is not working,’ he added…”
“’We’re seeing productivity declines bigger than I would have anticipated, but importantly also continuing longer than I would have anticipated,’ McDonough said.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree the review is necessary. In letters to McDonough, members said clinicians in Spokane struggled to use the new platform to fill prescriptions, leading to mistakes that, in some cases, negatively impacted patient care…”
“’At the end of the day this is about service provision and outcomes for the vets,’ he said. ‘That has to be what drives it, and the best proxy for that right now is making sure that our practitioners, clinicians, doctors… and nurses understand what it means and see its benefit. If they don’t, we’re going to be in this box for a long time.’…” Read the full article here.
Source: McDonough acknowledges productivity concerns with VA’s new EHR – By Nicole Ogrysko , March 25, 2021. Federal News Network.
