Rep. Phil Roe has concerns about 10-year VA EHR implementation
The agency hopes to have interoperability with DoD, but a decade is a “lifetime” for the software industry.
It will take the Department of Veterans Affairs about a decade to implement its new Cerner electronic health record system—a long, costly ramp-up that is causing heartburn for one senior congressman.
Rep. Phil Roe, MD (R-Tenn.), ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, expressed his concerns during Wednesday’s hearing on the future of the agency to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.
“The EHR’s developmental and operational costs will be predictable, because VA will have shifted most of them to Cerner,” Roe told Wilkie. “But 11 years is a lifetime in this software industry, and the EHR is just one element—albeit a big element—of the VA’s overall health IT.”
According to the latest VA data provided to Congress, the total cost to implement the Cerner EHR system over 10 years will exceed $16 billion—of that, the agency’s contract with the health IT vendor is valued at $10 billion. The VA intends to create a single common EHR system with the Department of Defense by leveraging a shared Cerner Millennium platform.
“We need to stay focused on the ultimate goal—interoperability,” said Roe. “When the Cerner decision was originally announced, I called on Secretary (David) Shulkin to implement the new EHR inside of a world-class interoperability platform, not to build an interoperability function inside an EHR. I believe that even more strongly today.”
Roe urged the VA to “incorporate an interoperability strategy in any kind of roadmap for the future,” noting that, “if all goes well” by the year 2030, the agency “will have a seamless health record exchange with DoD.”
However, DoD and VA are still trying to figure out how to best align their agencies’ respective plans to create a common Cerner EHR system. At the HIMSS19 conference earlier this month in Orlando, officials said coordinating their activities to ensure interoperability is a work in progress, emphasizing that the agencies continue to discuss an optimal organizational design that will facilitate coordinated decision-making and oversight when it comes to governance.
Also See: DoD and VA still working out how to create single EHR
Wilkie assured lawmakers during Wednesday’s hearing that DoD-VA collaboration will create a modern EHR so that America’s warriors have quality healthcare as they transition from service member to veteran.
“No longer will someone like my father—after 30 years of service and terrible wounds in Vietnam—have to carry around an 800-page paper record,” said Wilkie.
Late last year, Wilkie and Defense Secretary James Mattis signed a joint statement committing to the implementation of a single, seamlessly integrated EHR that “maximizes commercial health record interoperability” by sharing data between DoD and VA as well as community healthcare providers.
“We are in the process and I will be coming to this committee, hopefully, to discuss the final building block in terms of joint program management of the EHR modernization, which will bring together formally the Department of Defense and VA in a way that no two large departments have ever come together,” concluded Wilkie. “That is the joint solution in the future.”
“We look forward to a close and productive relationship with our DoD partners in the future,” added Richard Stone, MD, executive in charge of the Veterans Health Administration. “The ability to use data for future health outcomes requires the data to be accessible and that we be able to data mine it.”
Rep. Phil Roe, MD (R-Tenn.), ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, expressed his concerns during Wednesday’s hearing on the future of the agency to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.
“The EHR’s developmental and operational costs will be predictable, because VA will have shifted most of them to Cerner,” Roe told Wilkie. “But 11 years is a lifetime in this software industry, and the EHR is just one element—albeit a big element—of the VA’s overall health IT.”
According to the latest VA data provided to Congress, the total cost to implement the Cerner EHR system over 10 years will exceed $16 billion—of that, the agency’s contract with the health IT vendor is valued at $10 billion. The VA intends to create a single common EHR system with the Department of Defense by leveraging a shared Cerner Millennium platform.“We need to stay focused on the ultimate goal—interoperability,” said Roe. “When the Cerner decision was originally announced, I called on Secretary (David) Shulkin to implement the new EHR inside of a world-class interoperability platform, not to build an interoperability function inside an EHR. I believe that even more strongly today.”
Roe urged the VA to “incorporate an interoperability strategy in any kind of roadmap for the future,” noting that, “if all goes well” by the year 2030, the agency “will have a seamless health record exchange with DoD.”However, DoD and VA are still trying to figure out how to best align their agencies’ respective plans to create a common Cerner EHR system. At the HIMSS19 conference earlier this month in Orlando, officials said coordinating their activities to ensure interoperability is a work in progress, emphasizing that the agencies continue to discuss an optimal organizational design that will facilitate coordinated decision-making and oversight when it comes to governance.
Also See: DoD and VA still working out how to create single EHR
Wilkie assured lawmakers during Wednesday’s hearing that DoD-VA collaboration will create a modern EHR so that America’s warriors have quality healthcare as they transition from service member to veteran.
“No longer will someone like my father—after 30 years of service and terrible wounds in Vietnam—have to carry around an 800-page paper record,” said Wilkie.
Late last year, Wilkie and Defense Secretary James Mattis signed a joint statement committing to the implementation of a single, seamlessly integrated EHR that “maximizes commercial health record interoperability” by sharing data between DoD and VA as well as community healthcare providers.
“We are in the process and I will be coming to this committee, hopefully, to discuss the final building block in terms of joint program management of the EHR modernization, which will bring together formally the Department of Defense and VA in a way that no two large departments have ever come together,” concluded Wilkie. “That is the joint solution in the future.”
“We look forward to a close and productive relationship with our DoD partners in the future,” added Richard Stone, MD, executive in charge of the Veterans Health Administration. “The ability to use data for future health outcomes requires the data to be accessible and that we be able to data mine it.”
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