VA officials claim EHR go-live still on track despite hiccups
VETERANS AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT leaders last month tried to reassure lawmakers that they are on track to bring the first site live on a new electronic health record system in March.
VA Deputy Secretary James Byrne during a hearing with the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s Technology Modernization Subcommittee said he was “very confident” that Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Wash., will have a successful go-live on March 28, 2020.
“At this point, I have a tremendous amount of confidence in the team that we’ve assembled to do this,” Byrne said.
The VA still has a set of configuration, interface development, testing and training tasks to complete in the four months before implementation, noted Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.). Those tasks are on a tight schedule—if one or more take longer than expected, it could create challenges for ensuring staff are trained before the go-live.
The department inked a no-bid, $10 billion contract with Cerner Corp. in May 2018 for a 10-year rollout of a system it’s co-developing with the Defense Department.
The EHR development process has already hit some snags due to lack of coordination between the VA and the Defense Department, Cerner executives told lawmakers this summer. Since then, the agencies have proposed a joint office that would have decisionmaking authority over the project, called the Federal EHR Modernization Program Management Office. But the office won’t have its organizational structure finalized until after the EHR’s implementation starts.
One point of contention is that patients who have received care through both the Veterans Health Administration and the Military Health System won’t be able to request their entire record from one place. Instead, they’ll have to approach each agency to request access to health data completed at the respective health system.
That’s a result of regulations surrounding what information each agency is allowed to release, said Dr. Laura Kroupa, chief medical officer at the VA’s Office of EHR Modernization.
“This is concerning to me, because the goal of Congress in establishing the (EHR modernization) programs was to establish one single record that follows service members as they enlist in the military, perform their service, transition and then for the rest of their lives,” Lee said.