VA, GAO push back against proposed House overhaul measures

April 20, 2023 | by

Today’s House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations meeting didn’t bode well for House bills demanding reform or restart. The Democrat-backed bill, dubbed the Manage VA Act, and the second Republican bill, Terminate VA’s EHRM Program (there is also a third, proposed by Republicans, the Electronic Health Record Modernization Improvement Act) were criticized by both VA and GAO representatives at the meeting.

The Manage VA Act proposes the creation of a VA undersecretary for management, who would serve as the Chief Management Officer (CMO). This would not only be for the Oracle Cerner EHR Modernization (EHRM) but also consolidate and standardize acquisition and IT functions across VA. VA and GAO criticized the new position as duplicative of the current VA structure and would run into obstacles similar to a CMO effort within the Department of Defense (DOD), such as lack of clarity and conflict with the CIO plus lack of funding for cross-functional teams and initiatives proposed by the CMO. To FedScoop, Shelby Oakley of the GAO representative expressed a dim view of how the VA has been handling things. “There needs to be much more discipline in the VA’s EHRM approach right now and it’s not clear that the CMO position would change that.” 

The Terminate VA EHRM Program bill, not unexpectedly, was derided as impractical and impossible. Fact: VistA is 40 years old and previous upgrade attempts have failed. Yet a VA deputy CIO just a month ago at an industry meeting, the Association for Federal IRM (AFFIRM), admitted that VistA is being moved to the cloud and being ‘containerized.’ Another VA software executive said it may be needed for another 10 years. You have to wonder if the House or Senate VA committees even know this and appreciate what it really is saying. 

VA EHR update: four deaths traced to Oracle Cerner EHR; four safety issues identified by VA EHRM Sprint Team

March 18, 2023 | by

The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee is unhappy. Very unhappy. With good reason. The ongoing problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rollout of the Oracle Cerner EHR multiply. There were six instances of ‘catastrophic harm’ attributed to a feature of the EHR modernization program since the rollout, four of which resulted in the death of a veteran patient. According to information given to the staff of Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), one fatality was at Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center and the other three died as patients in the VA Central Ohio Healthcare System, launched in April 2022. The nonfatal cases happened to veteran patients in the Inland Northwest (also Spokane).

While Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, threatened to withhold further funding for the EHR migration, Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) is not fed up enough to be in favor of terminating the contract, as the House Veterans Affairs technology subcommittee head, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-also MT), proposed in January in H.R. 608, [TTA 1 Feb] now in the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The VA has paid Oracle Cerner $4.4 billion on the contract so far, with a refund of $325,000 paid as compensation for ‘incomplete technology and poor training’. Obligations through the contract are at least $9.4 billion. It comes up for renegotiation on 17 May and VA’s contracting officer, Michael Parrish, has testified he will push for a more favorable contract

The Government Accountability Office is also unhappy. The GAO, which calculated the above obligations, told the committee that the EHR contract “as currently written, has not sufficiently motivated Oracle-Cerner to perform better,” and that the current terms of the contract are “not necessarily in the best favor of the government in this particular case.” The GAO surveyed VA users of the Oracle Cerner EHR and found that only 6% agreed the system enabled quality care. Some of this may be reluctance to change technologies after 40 years of VistA, as Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) pointed out in what this Editor expects is a ‘devil’s advocate’ statement, but there is also a fatigue factor–it’s the fourth attempt at replacing VistA.  Federal News Network 16 March, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Becker’s HealthIT

The VA’s EHRM Sprint Team identified four main issues in the EHR Modernization Sprint Report (PDF) released on 10 March.

1) Unknown queue and related issues (including medications)
2) No show and cancelled appointment orders failed to route to scheduling queues
3) Add Referral button not creating visible external site referral for worklist action
4) Usability issues with the EHR application, allowing providers to order procedure charge codes for imaging without ordering the actual clinical imaging

There were 30 safety issues examined by the team (pages 6-7) of 450 submitted. The report also identified EHR workarounds for VA medical centers that conduct medical research, an issue that surfaced publicly with Ann Arbor Healthcare System in delaying their go-live until 2024 [TTA 1 Mar]. They also examined the Data Collection Workbooks (DCW) process to better ensure consistency with VA standards through moving to a standardized approach. The VA is developing an Enterprise Site Readiness Dashboard for determining if a site is ready to migrate their EHR. Federal News Network 13 March

The devil is in the (migrated) data: GAO watchdog barks at the VA’s transition from VistA to Cerner

February 9, 2022 | by

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released their “watchdog” report on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ first, failed implementation at Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in October 2020. Their 52-page whopper of a report came to a simple conclusion: the VA didn’t ensure the quality of the data migrating from the EHR warhorse VistA and their Corporate Data Warehouse to Cerner Millenium. Thus clinicians couldn’t use Cerner two ways–one was training in how to use it (as noted in VA’s own analysis) so they could not find the patient information they needed–and the fact that even if they knew how to use it, the data migration apparently was incomplete. The GAO found that the VA did not establish performance measures and goals for migrated data quality based on Federal guidance. The result was inevitable. According to the report, “clinicians experienced challenges with the quality of migrated data, including their accessibility, accuracy, and appropriateness.” 

There is also a method called a stakeholder register which helps to identify and engage all key stakeholders. VA did not use this, so some areas were overlooked in the continuity of reporting and preservation of records. This affects not only patient records, but also scheduling.

The main takeaway is that GAO recommends to VA that they establish performance measures and goals that ensure the quality of migrated data and use a stakeholder register managed by the VA’s deputy secretary to engage all the relevant stakeholders in the migration in reporting needs. VA published its own analysis of its implementation and rollout failures in December. Healthcare IT News

GAO tells VA to postpone Cerner EHR implementation–but VA will be continuing

February 19, 2021 | by

The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is still in the long rollout of the Cerner/Leidos EHR system to replace their home-grown, once groundbreaking VistA and to be interoperable with the Department of Defense’s Cerner Millenium system. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report (PDF link) that concludes that “VA should postpone deployment of its new EHR system at planned locations until any resulting critical and high severity test findings are appropriately addressed.” These potential system failure points were brought up by GAO to Congress last October at the time of the first implementation in Spokane, Washington. The sidebar on GAO’s report states that VA agreed with the postponement, but a news report in FedScoop indicates that VA believes, per their comments in the report, that:

  • VA and Cerner have resolved the major issues (down to 55 from close to 400)
  • They will resolve the rest by January 2022
  • They will proceed with the scheduled rollout to the VA’s Puget Sound Health Care System in Q4 2021.

Hat tip to HISTalk, which managed to summarize this in seven short sentences (!).

Ransom! (ware) strikes more hospitals and Apple (update)–Healthcare.gov’s plus trouble

March 26, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hackermania.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Get out the Ransom! California hospitals appear to be Top of the Pops for ransomware attacks, which lock down and encrypt information after someone opens a malicious link in email, making it inaccessible. After the well-publicized attack on Hollywood Presbyterian in February, this week two hospitals in the Inland Empire, Chino Valley Medical Center in Chino and Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville, both owned by Prime Healthcare Management, received demands. While hacked, neither hospital paid the ransom and no patient data was compromised according to hospital spokesmen. Additional hospitals earlier this month: Methodist Hospital in Henderson, Kentucky and Ottawa Hospital in Ontario, Canada. In Ottawa, four computers were hacked but isolated and wiped. It is not known if ‘Locky’, the moniker for a new ransomware, was the Canadian culprit. FBI on the case in the US. HealthcareITNews, National Post

Update: Locky is the suspected culprit in the Prime, Hollywood Presbyterian and Kentucky ransomware attacks. On Monday, Maryland-based MedStar Health reported malware had caused a shutdown of some systems at its hospitals in Baltimore. Separately, Cisco Talos Research is claiming that a number of the attacks are exploiting a vulnerability in a network server called JBoss using a ransomware dubbed SamSam. Perhaps both are creating mischief? Ars Technica, Cisco Talos blog, BBC News, ThreatPost

More and worse attacks north of the 49th Parallel. Norfolk General Hospital in Simcoe, Ontario had a ransomware attack this week that spread to computers of staff, patients and families via the external website through the outdated content management system. According to MalwareBytes, “The particular strain of ransomware dropped here is TeslaCrypt which demands $500 to recover your personal files it has encrypted. That payment doubles after a week.”  So if you are running old Joomla! or even old WordPress, update now! Neil Versel in MedCityNews

If you’re thinking Mac Prevents Attacks, the first ransomware targeting Apple OS X hit earlier this month. Mac users who  downloaded version 2.90 of Transmission, a data transfer program using BitTorrent, were infected. KeRanger appears after three days to demand one bitcoin (about $400) to a specific address to retrieve their files. HealthcareITNews

Finally, there is the Hackermania gift that keeps on giving: Healthcare.gov. (more…)

Defense, VA EHR interoperability off the tracks again: GAO

August 18, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Thomas.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /] According to the US Congress’ Government Accountability Office (GAO), the birddog of All Things Budget, the Department of Defense (DOD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) missed the 1 Oct 2014 deadline established in the Fiscal Year 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to certify that all health data in their systems met national standards and were interoperable. Modernization of software–a new Cerner EHR for DOD, modernization of VistA– is also behind the curve with a due date now beyond the 31 Dec 2016 deadline until after 2018. Finally the DOD-VA Interagency Program Office (IPO), which shares health data between the departments, has not yet produced or created a time frame nor “specified outcome-oriented metrics and established related goals that are important to gauging the impact that interoperability capabilities have on improving health care services for shared patients.” iHealthBeat, GAO report

Another go at a joint DOD-VA EHR? (US)

March 31, 2015 | by

As this Editor was Pondering the Squandering last week of $28 billion HITECH Act funds meant to achieve EHR interoperability but falling well short, we recalled another Big EHR Squander: the integration of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) AHLTA with the Veteran Affairs’ VistA, an iEHR effort which collapsed in February 2013 at a mere $1 billion, in addition to dysfunctional or failed upgrades in both systems at just under $4 billion [TTA 27 July 13]. For civilians, this may not sound like much for concern, but for active duty, Reserve and National Guard service members transitioning from active to civilian status (and back as they are activated), often with complicated medical histories, it means a great deal.

At least one Congressman who also happens to be a physician, Representative Phil Roe, MD (R-TN) wants to try, try again. According to Politico’s Morning eHealth of last Wednesday, his bill will offer “a $50 million prize to the creator of an integrated military-veteran medical records system.” plus another $25 million over five years to operate it. DOD is moving forward with an $11 billion bid for a new EHR, but Rep. Roe’s staff issued a statement that differs with the DOD’s–that the new EHR still has no provision for secure and relatively seamless interoperability with the VA system to streamline the transfer of claims. We wish the best to Rep. Roe, and hope he can overcome Congressional inertia and two huge bureaucracies amidst doubts on the DOD’s EHR award process. FierceEMR on Roe bill, award process and adoption concerns by GAO and others. Also Anne Zieger in Healthcare Dive, iHealthBeat.

VA, DoD aren’t collaborating on EHR: GAO

February 28, 2014 | by

Your ‘Dog Bites Man’ item for the weekend (no, it’s not in reverse!) is that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has determined that Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) have not yet proved that their current two-system path, having rejected a single EHR, actually will be workable. In February 2013, both agencies abandoned a joint system after $1 billion in spend, and $4 billion in fixes/upgrades to their separate VistA and AHLTA systems. [TTA 15 Dec] By the two agencies going their separate ways, the GAO is mystified on what is going on with interoperability. The answer: not much. And as mentioned in our 15 December article, there was a 31 January deadline for an interoperability plan (or single system) to be implemented by 2016, mandated by the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Obviously, this deadline has come and gone. FierceEMR article, GAO recommendation (full text PDF)

One way to overcome the interoperability problem and too much in the EHR? Get rid of those pesky backlogged patient records! The Daily Caller uncovered a VA whistleblower’s complaint to the VA’s Inspector General and their office of special counsel, plus Congress, that VA officials in Los Angeles intentionally canceled backlogged patient exam requests going back more than one year–and that the delay on exams went back 6-9 months. The deletions started in 2009. There is a wrongful dismissal (of said whistleblower) suit and other joy. Article, audio (02:21) Updates 3-4 March:  according to Under Secretary for Health Robert Petzel, the Daily Caller report was ‘scurrilous’. He stated that about 300 records were closed but not deleted after administrative review, generally for old imaging requests, and there was no effort to delete records to boost performance.  According to FierceHealthIT, the backlog is about 400,000. Also Military Times. According to EHR Intelligence, both DoD and the VA agree with the GAO recommendations; GAO will update its findings once the agencies have taken action. Also iHealthBeat.