Lawmakers want VA to nail down total EHR modernization cost

Lawmakers want VA to nail down total EHR modernization cost
The Department of Veterans Affairs needs to figure out the cost of its troubled electronic health record modernization program as it moves to restart deployments of the new software, lawmakers and witnesses warned during a House hearing on Monday. 

VA initially signed a $10 billion contract — which was later revised to over $16 billion — with Cerner in May 2018 to modernize its legacy health record system and make it interoperable with the Pentagon’s new health record, which was also provided by Cerner. Oracle later acquired Cerner in 2022.



Almost as soon as the new EHR system went live in 2020 at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, however, the modernization project was beset by a host of problems, including cost overruns, patient safety concerns and technical glitches. VA subsequently paused deployments of the EHR system in April 2023 as part of a “reset” to address problems at the facilities where the software had been deployed. 



Following the successful joint VA-DOD rollout of the EHR software at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, Illinois last March — the sixth facility to use the new system — and citing significant improvements at the other sites using the Oracle Cerner EHR, VA announced in December that it was “beginning early-stage planning” to restart deployments in mid-2026.



Even as VA looks to implement the Oracle Cerner EHR system at four of its Michigan-based medical facilities in 2026, members of the House Veterans’ Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee pressed the department on Monday to pin down the long-term costs and time commitments needed to complete the modernization project. 



Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., the panel’s chairman, said he was not convinced VA h ..

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