The Department of Veteran Affairs has recorded almost 500 major incidents with its new Oracle-Cerner electronic health records system and at least 45 days of downtime within the system since it was rolled out in the fall of 2020, according to internal VA data.
A dataset obtained by FedScoop through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that the Oracle-Cerner EHR system had a total of 498 major incidents between Sept. 8, 2020 and June 10, 2022…
In a statement provided to this publication, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough, said: “The bottom line is that my confidence in the EHR is badly shaken. Regardless of whether an outage in the system lasts for one minute or one hour or one day, any outage or delay is unacceptable for the Veterans we serve and our VA health care providers who serve them.
He added: “The goal of the new system is, and always has been, to provide better health outcomes for Veterans and a better experience for providers. Right now, the system is not meeting those goals and needs major improvement. we at VA could not be more frustrated on behalf of Veterans and providers, and we’re holding Cerner, Oracle, and ourselves accountable to get this right.”… Read the full article here.
