VA Secretary Denis McDonough (right) recently ordered a 12-week review of the VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization program. (Photo: Robert Turtil, VA)
The Department of Veterans Affairs announced on March 19 that it is issuing a strategic review of its Electronic Health Record Modernization program after a Feb. 2021 Government Accountability Office report recommended that the VA delay the program’s launch until existing issues are fixed or provided workarounds.
The VA’s EHRM program began over 10 years ago and has cost over $16B thus far. In the March 19 press release, VA Secretary Denis McDonough says the program “is essential in the delivery of lifetime, world-class health care for our veterans.”
The program is intended to consolidate several different recordkeeping measures into a single system that will enable efficient record access. Also, the Department of Defense intends to make its health records available to the VA’s system so servicemembers and VA health care workers can easily access records once they retire.
Over the years, the program has faced several delays, mostly due to its ambitious and large-scale implementation. However, the system was successfully launched in Oct. 2020 in Spokane, WA without any major problems—but only after the launch was delayed twice: once for additional training, then again because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nevertheless, the February GAO report says that its investigation uncovered several potential causes for both system-wide and less critical failures that should be addressed before the VA launches the program in new locations.
The VA says that it does not currently expect to change the EHRM launch for its next site in Columbus, OH. However, if the 12-week strategic review it’s conducting discovers anything critical it may delay or alter the schedule for additional launch sites.
Currently, the EHRM program is supposed to roll out over a 10-year period ending in 2028. Neither the VA nor EHRM program leaders have released any kind of definitive schedule and it remains unclear when or if the program will launch in California.
Author: Christian Southards
Coming from a family with a proud military background and wanting to contribute his writing skills to a worthy cause, Christian began writing for the California American Legion in August of 2020. His father is a 25-year Army Veteran and his grandfather served in the Navy during Vietnam.