The deployment of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ new multibillion-dollar Oracle-Cerner Millennium electronic health record system faced significant setbacks in 2022, but agency officials and lawmakers—despite growing concerns about the project’s cost and technical issues—are continuing to fund and support the software’s rollout across the VA’s network of medical facilities for, at least, a little while longer…
Beyond system outages, cost overruns and patient safety concerns across the five sites where the new EHR system has been deployed, a report released by the VA Inspector General’s office in July found that software’s uneven rollout at Mann-Grandstaff led to more than 11,000 clinical orders for veterans being improperly routed to an “unknown queue” without the knowledge of clinicians.
VA officials said in July that they were delaying all of the remaining EHR system rollouts scheduled for this year until early 2023 to address technical and patient safety issues associated with the software. In October, VA officials announced that they were once again extending the delay in the software’s deployment, this time until June 2023…
Despite the EHR system’s cost, other major IT projects at VA that have received significant pushback from lawmakers have not been immune from drastic operational changes. The VA announced earlier this month that it will “transition” from using the Defense Department’s multibillion-dollar supply chain management system—the Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support, or DMLSS—after its rollout at a pilot site in Illinois was hampered by functionality problems and led to calls from Congress and an agency watchdog to cancel the project.
For now, at least, Congress is continuing to support the rollout of the EHR system, with lawmakers already securing funding to resume the software’s deployment next year. The omnibus spending bill—which was approved by Congress on Dec. 23—included more than $300 billion in funding for VA during the 2023 fiscal year, including $1.8 billion “to continue the department’s work to roll out the electronic health record system to facilities across the country.”…