Denis McDonough, secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, told the House VA Committee on Thursday that progress on the EHR Program RESET Act of 2023 — first introduced a year ago — will help addresses some of the challenges of Oracle Health electronic health records implementation and enables broader deployment by 2025.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
While the four-hour Congressional session covered many of the VA’s budget requests, lawmakers asked about some health IT specifics – such as funding to continue the program modernize the agency’s EHR, infrastructure readiness, etc
“VA is seeing incremental but accelerating progress because it solves problems that clinicians and other end users are facing, and because it optimizes the current state of the system.” EHR system to ensure the enterprise-wide foundation is in place for success as implementation continues,” McDonough said in a statement on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Budget Request for FY 2025 and 2026.
The Biden administration made VA EHRM one of its national health care priorities last year, proposing $1.9 billion to support the project.
In March, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2024 finally appropriated $1.3 billion for VA EHRM, but authorized Congress to withhold 25% based on efforts to fix past problems, NextGovernment report.
In the past, some lawmakers wanted to end the troubled Oracle Cerner implementation, which prompted further congressional scrutiny of the committed funding.
McDonough confirmed Thursday that the $894 million FY25 budget will support the Oracle reset and fund six VA facilities currently using the new EHR.
During questions, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., said she was concerned that significant budget cuts — half of the FY24 budget — would impact the VA’s ability to in overcoming the program reset for implementation, while also asking about future operations at additional VA health care sites next year.
“We won’t reset forever,” McDonough replied, saying he anticipates having discussions before the end of the year to go beyond the EHRM reset and about scheduling the come into operation in 2025.
She asked him how they would be paid, and he replied that they would be paid with three years of existing funding.
McDonough also called the proposed FY25 and FY26 VA budget a “maintenance budget,” but emphasized that a single health record – one that communicates with the Department of Defense’s EHR – is needed throughout VA Department of Health Systems.
BIGGER TREND
Last year, VA announced a renegotiated contract with Oracle that included significant monetary credits to the agency if the vendor failed to meet key accountability metrics. operational efficiency.
“Oracle Cerner’s electronic health records program has many shortcomings – causing problems,” Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., said in 2023 when he proposed legislation to block VA EHR modernization to healthcare workers and poses a significant patient safety risk.” .
After a series of outages and patient harm, the VA Office of Inspector General launched multiple investigations into potential system failures.
The agency recently completed one of its investigations into pharmaceutical patient safety issues following reports of prescription backlogs at the VA Central Healthcare System. Ohio in Columbus, Ohio, occurs after Oracle EHR goes live in April 2022.
OIG flagged issues with the active drug list in the VA EHR in a statement to the House Veterans Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on technology modernization at its February 15 hearing on safety. EHR safety and effectiveness are under siege.
If veterans were treated at one of five sites using the department’s Oracle Health EHR, the watchdog said, then followed up at one site on the old Vista EHR, their medication information may not be accurate.
OIG has provided VA with more than 70 corrective action recommendations since April 2020, David Case, deputy inspector general at OIG, said in a statement to the subcommittee.
ON PROFILE
“VA acknowledges that an update [VA EHRM] The implementation schedule is critical to demonstrate commitment and will provide that schedule to the committee once determined,” McDonough said in a statement to the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
Andrea Fox is a senior editor at Healthcare IT News.
Email: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.
