VA Secretary: Changes Coming to Electronic Health Records Program – By Aaron Boyd (Nextgov) / July 2 2021
Secretary Denis McDonough just completed a months-long strategic review of the multibillion-dollar EHR modernization program.
The Veterans Affairs Department will move forward with its multibillion-dollar commercial electronic health records rollout after a 12-week strategic review put the program on pause. The review will lead to significant changes, VA Secretary Denis McDonough said this week, though he declined to share further details.
VA has been working for more than two years with commercial EHR company Cerner to develop and deploy a single records management system across the agency that will also be interoperable with the Cerner-built system being deployed by the Defense Department and the Leidos Partnership for Defense Health.
But five months after the first deployment of VA’s new Cerner Millennium EHR system at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, subsequent deployments were put on hold for a 12-week “strategic review” by the new VA secretary.
That review wrapped up at the end of June.
