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Despite failures so far, VA inks new Oracle Cerner health records deal – By Leo Shane III (Military Times) / May 16, 2023
Veterans Affairs officials on Tuesday announced an extension of their contract with Oracle Cerner to continue their embattled electronic health records overhaul, promising that new safeguards in the agreement will improve the existing software system’s performance.
The deal means five more years of partnership between the department and the digital information firm, both of which have come under scrutiny for work so far on the $16 billion project. Only a few sites are using the new records system, despite five years of effort so far, and future rollouts have been postponed indefinitely until key improvements are made.
Glitches in the system have produced more than 150 cases of veterans suffering harm from medical record mistakes and shortfalls. Administrators reported last fall that the system failed to deliver more than 11,000 orders for specialty care, lab work and other services, all without alerting health care providers the orders had been lost.
Neil Evans, acting program executive director of VA’s health records project, acknowledged in a statement that “the system has not delivered for veterans or VA clinicians to date, but we are stopping at nothing to get this right.”
