The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is touting its most recent Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program rollout at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (Lovell FHCC) near Chicago as its “most successful deployment” yet.
The VA deployed its Oracle Cerner electronic health record (EHR) system earlier this month at the site, which is the only healthcare facility to serve both Department of Defense (DoD) and VA patients.
It marked the VA’s first deployment since announcing a reset of its EHRM program in 2023, as well as the DoD’s final deployment of its EHR program – which it calls MHS GENESIS.
“We’re seeing this as the most successful deployment we’ve had,” VA Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal said during a March 26 press conference. “So far, I think part because of the incredible teamwork between VA and DoD, but also the learnings we’ve had – significant learnings over the last several years – we think the deployment is going quite well so far.”
The rollout comes after VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports published last week revealed that scheduling issues within the new EHR system may continue to affect deployment of the program at other VA facilities.
The OIG revealed that more work must be done to fix the scheduling system challenges of the EHR at the five smaller go-live sites, which it said “could be exacerbated at larger, more complex medical centers” such as Lovell FHCC.
Nevertheless, VA Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters that as of the middle of last week, the Lovell FHCC was at about “60 percent of pre-go-live appointment manifestation, meaning they are fulfilling 60 percent of the appointments.”
“That was a little bit ahead of what they had assessed would be the likely outcome,” McDonough said. “Remember that in each of the go-lives, there’s expected to be a substantial productivity loss as we work through the training and the deployment of the new system. So, that’s an important number. It’s an early, strong indicator.”
Dr. Elnahal stressed that the VA will continue to watch the North Chicago site “very closely” over the next few months as it starts to roll back some of the direct deployment support and the site resumes normal operations.
“We’ll be watching closely at what these trends are. We’ll be very transparent when problems arise and we’ll jump on any issue to fix it,” he said.
Secretary McDonough stressed that the VA OIG reports are vital to helping the agency address technical issues that may arise with the new EHR system, and the VA is working very closely with VA Inspector General (IG) Michael Missal.
“It’s really, really, really important that the IG dedicates that kind of attention and time and resources to EHR that he has dedicated so far,” McDonough said. “We really, really appreciate it. We learned a lot from each of his new studies.”
“There’s a reason we’re in reset, and these are hard-learned lessons,” he added. “We’re going to stay in reset until we are confident that we are making the system work in a way that improves veteran outcomes and improves the provider experience in those five sites before we go-live any farther.”
