by
John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | May 17, 2022
In a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing in May 2022, VA chief Denis McDonough said he would “make every decision based on the experience of the learning to date.” He also said in a House VA Committee hearing in late April that he would not allow the VA to continue rolling out the Cerner system “if I ever have any reason to think that this is creating risk for our patients,” reported The Spokesman-Review.
In addition to the outages and degradations, a veteran was hospitalized earlier this year with heart failure for five days due to the Cerner system mistakenly instructing that his medication distribution stop, reported the Spokesman-Review.
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The system has also been plagued by financial issues. A report in May 2021 estimated that the agency
may be short by as much as $2.6 billion due to infrastructure upgrades, including electrical work, cabling and heating, ventilation and cooling. This was followed by another in July that found an additional deficit of $2.5 billion for IT infrastructure needs, including system interfaces and end-user devices, making the VA short by as much as an estimated $5.1 billion.
An independent cost estimate was
initiated in October to determine how much it can expect to spend on the project, including for IT and physical infrastructure upgrades. The VA said it would work with the Office of the Inspector General over the next year to improve planning and coordination.
The pandemic also delayed the project in early 2020, with work
resuming in August of that year. Another six-month delay was
initiated in July 2021 due to training failures, data migration problems and concerns over patients safety at Mann-Grandstaff. An investigation carried out by the Spokesman-Review in December still found that Mann-Grandstaff employees believed the system poses harm to veterans.
The system is scheduled to launch in Roseburg and White City, Oregon on June 11; Boise on June 25; Anchorage, Alaska on July 16; Seattle and other Puget Sound facilities on August 27; three sites in Michigan on October 8; and in Portland on November 5.
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