Law VA Signs Contract for an Electronic Health Record System

Statement by Acting Secretary Robert Wilkie

VA signs contract with Cerner for an electronic health record system

I am pleased to announce we have signed a contract with Cerner today that will modernize the VA’s health care IT system and help provide seamless care to Veterans as they transition from military service to Veteran status, and when they choose to use community care.

This is one of the largest IT contracts in the federal government, with a ceiling of $10 billion over 10 years. And with a contract of that size, you can understand why former Secretary Shulkin and I took some extra time to do our due diligence and make sure the contract does what the President wanted.

President Trump has made very clear to me that he wants this contract to do right by both Veterans and taxpayers, and I can say now without a doubt that it does.

With this contract, VA will adopt the same EHR platform as the Department of Defense (DoD):

• Patient data will be seamlessly shared between VA, DoD, and community providers through a secure system.
• Health information will be much easier to share, and health care will be much easier to coordinate and deliver, as well as faster and safer.
• Care by all providers will be transparent to the entire care team.
• VA will add capabilities to the system as necessary to meet the special needs of Veterans, VA clinicians, and our community-care partners.

When fully deployed, the new system will represent a monumental advance in Veterans’ health care — bigger than VA’s initial deployment of electronic health records 40 years ago.

• VA and DoD are collaborating closely to ensure lessons learned at DoD sites will be implemented in future deployments at DoD as well as VA. We appreciate the DoD’s willingness to share its experiences implementing its electronic health record.
• We already have $782 million in funding for FY 2018 to get the effort underway, thanks to support from Congress.

In sum, signing this contract today is an enormous win for our nation’s Veterans. It puts in place a modern IT system that will support the best possible health care for decades to come. That’s exactly what our nation’s heroes deserve.

Full Statement | Related Article 1 | Related Article 2

Well, this story isn't really funny or politically-relevant to what I usually bore you all with, but this is really significant and interesting, so I'm going to toss it in here anyways. Currently, the separate systems used by the DoD and VA are a bit bullshit. Veterans frequently have to physically deliver their entire medical records to the VA, because the systems were not linked. Uniformity will vastly increase the quality of care, and ease of transition between the two systems.

This wasn't exactly the kind of story I was poking around for today, but I figured if we have any servicemen or veterans or someone who lives with or knows a veteran, this might be something they're keen to know about. Updating the electronic infrastructure in the VA has been a long time overdue, and I'm really happy to see that the VA is starting to get attention again.

This will go a long way towards helping to decentralize the current system, too, which is extraordinarily expensive, so in the long run it's going to help save the VA a whole bunch of money that they can use elsewhere.

 

[AnimuGinger]

Okay but Cerner is pretty awful to use.

 

[Keystone]

Wow, they didn't have EHRs already? Even shitty, podunk hospitals in the sticks manage to have it by now. Government fuckin' "standards" I guess, right?

Hopefully this'll help relieve the stress vets apparently have to go through with the VA, if they bother at all in the first place. This might stop a few from eating buckshot, so yay.

 

[AnimuGinger]

Wow, they didn't have EHRs already? Even shitty, podunk hospitals in the sticks manage to have it by now. Government fuckin' "standards" I guess, right?

Hopefully this'll help relieve the stress vets apparently have to go through with the VA, if they bother at all in the first place. This might stop a few from eating buckshot, so yay.

The VA has had it's own system. But that system was also a royal pain the ass to use, though it was fast.

 

[The Fool]

Can't wait for it to cause a giant data breach a week after it's up

 

[Splendid]

But where will all the MUMPS programmers work now?

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Anything to save lives faster but this is going to have so many crippling problems I just know it.

 

[Derp Potato]

It's going to piggyback off of the DoD program which is working out quite well. Everything gets tested prior to it going in to a live environment to ensure there are no issues.

What issues do arise are typically caused by the extremely outdated government infrastructure or them opting for the bare minimum of equipment to only realize they need 3x the amount of servers. Other issues typically get solved overnight in house.

People hate it because it's new and people hate change.

It's also about time the DoD and VA hopped on the same program when it came to EHRM as opposed to the DoD using Cerner and the VA choosing Epic (the only other large enough EHR company) and everyone in the healthcare IT field knows that Epic doesn't like to share.

 

[WW 635]

Considering all the problems with being able to provide timely care, especially with those transitioning from military to veteran or veterans moving from one VA to another due to relocation, this is a huge step in the right direction.

 

[Yellow Yam Scam]

I thought the whole point was that the system sucked so we could avoid having our tax money go to fixing these dudes who we tricked into getting blown up to put oil in our SUVs.

 

[Derp Potato]

I thought the whole point was that the system sucked so we could avoid having our tax money go to fixing these dudes who we tricked into getting blown up to put oil in our SUVs.

If they die sooner from shitty care and/or missing health records, don't gotta pay for treatment or benefits!

It's a win/win!

 

[frozenrunner]

This will be hacked and all the info exposed.

Connecting everything to the internet was a mistake.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Connecting everything to the internet was a mistake.

Especially critical things like infrastructure or essential services.

Do people think such has to be online because "it's current year?"

 

[Cryin RN]

Okay but Cerner is pretty awful to use.

Yeah but it's not Meditech or the Canadian standard, fucking paper!

 

[neverendingmidi]

Now they can use electronic records to put veterans on shadow lists to be ignored. Efficiency!