An Workplace of Inspector Common (OIG) report discovered that the VA and Oracle Well being didn’t have satisfactory controls to forestall system adjustments within the EHR challenge from inflicting main incidents, to answer these incidents uniformly and totally, or to mitigate their influence by offering commonplace procedures and interoperable downtime tools.
The EHR system skilled tons of of main efficiency incidents affecting the 5 VA medical facilities the place the system was initially deployed.
A efficiency incident is outlined as main when it causes extreme system degradation, results in an outage of companies required for VA’s key operations, or impacts affected person care and requires a response past routine incident administration.
In response to those points, VA halted all deliberate EHR deployments in July 2022, aside from the deployment on the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Well being Care Middle in North Chicago, Illinois, on March 9, 2024. Since then, nevertheless, main efficiency incidents have continued, as lately as March 2024, the report stated.
The report additionally stated that though main efficiency incidents can delay care to veterans, VA had no formal course of to hyperlink stories of those delays to particular main efficiency incidents.
Finally, OIG says, the insufficient controls for dealing with main incidents stemmed from the Might 2018 10-year contract with Cerner (now Oracle Well being). In Might 2023, VA modified the contract to strengthen some necessities for addressing main incidents, however might do extra.
The EHR system’s estimated value has grown. It was initially $16 billion. If VA doesn’t enhance controls, main efficiency incidents will proceed, resulting in additional pricey delays in system implementation and posing an ongoing danger to affected person security, the report famous.
The OIG made 9 suggestions, together with real-time knowledge sharing to provide VA higher consciousness of potential issues in system operations, prioritizing main efficiency incident response in a transparent and constant method, growing and imposing response and different efficiency metrics to carry the contractor accountable, requiring adequate element in post-resolution stories, elevating employees consciousness of procedures and buying applicable backup techniques for downtime, and higher figuring out and addressing main efficiency incidents linked to damaging affected person outcomes.
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