Another Outage Hits Troubled Records System at VA, DoD Health Facilities – By Patricia Kime (Military.com) / April 28, 2023
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ new electronic health record system experienced the second outage in eight days on Tuesday, a setback VA Secretary Denis McDonough called “extraordinarily frustrating.”
The 224-minute outage of the Oracle Cerner system, during which health care providers could not utilize it, affected the five medical centers and affiliated clinics that have started using the system at the VA — as well as all Defense Department and Coast Guard health facilities also using the software, according to VA officials.
The event occurred just days after the VA announced it had halted expansion of the program to additional facilities until all system problems are addressed.
According to VA spokesman Gary Kunich, the outage began when “one of the databases in the Federal [Electronic Health Record, or EHR] became unresponsive due to a failed background process.”
