VA to Pause, Revamp Oracle-Cerner Health Records Project (1)

Friday’s “reset” of the VA’s multibillion-dollar program to improve its health records systems will disrupt the program and likely the vendor, software giant Oracle.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is stopping plans for rollouts to new sites of its Electronic Health Records Modernization program while it attempts to fix issues previously recognized at the five locations that currently have the software, according to the VA Friday.

The decision aligns with a push from House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.) in a bill (H.R. 592) that would require the VA to stop putting EHRM into place at new facilities until known issues at existing locations have been resolved. A separate bill (H.R. 608) introduced by Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) legislation would abolish the EHRM program entirely.

Both bills were discussed at an Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, along with the Department of Veteran Affairs I.T. Modernization Improvement Act (H.R. 1659).

The Department of Veterans Affairs has spent $5.5 billion since 2018 to put in place software for its program.

See: VA’s EHRM contract spending FY18–FY23 year-to-date
See: Biden on Board With Supporting Troubled VA Health Software

Cerner Corp. won the contract and then was acquired by Oracle in June 2022 after multiple reports from the VA’s Office of Inspector General citing deficiencies in the development and rollout of the EHRM program.

Friday’s announcement VA and contractor Oracle Cerner are working toward a revised contract to increase Oracle Cerner’s accountability to provide a higher functioning EHR system, the agency said.

Oracle and its subsidiaries have less than a billion dollars in total revenue from unclassified prime federal contracts since the beginning of fiscal 2018 that isn’t tied to the Cerner software for EHRM.

With assistance from Bloomberg Government Automation

To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda H. Allen in Washington at aallen@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fawn Johnson at fjohnson@bloombergindustry.com; Ashara Wilson at awilson1@bloombergindustry.com