VA Extends EHR Modernization Contract With Oracle

Dive Brief:

• The Department of Veterans Affairs has extended its contract with Oracle Health to replace its electronic health record for another 11 months, the agency announced Thursday.
• Negotiations for the contract renewal focused on supporting system improvements, achieving better predictability and managing costs, according to the VA. The agency had previously extended the contract for one month in May.
• The years-long EHR rollout has been rocky so far, plagued with patient safety and technical problems. Last year, the VA renegotiated a tougher contract with Oracle, shifting the deal from a five-year term to multiple one-year terms. 

Dive Insight:

Cerner — which was later acquired by technology giant Oracle for more than $28 billion — scored the contract to replace the VA’s legacy EHR, VistA, in 2018. 

Though the new record system was launched at its first VA medical center about two years later, deployment has been slow. Only six medical centers have transitioned to the Oracle record so far, and the rollout has struggled with system downtime, ballooning costs and errors that were linked to patient harm.

Clinicians aren’t happy with the EHR’s performance either. Fewer than 1 in 5 doctors, nurses and other VA employees said the record enabled them to deliver high quality care, according to an internal survey conducted this spring and seen by Bloomberg. 

The agency put deployments of the new EHR on hold more than a year ago to improve the system’s reliability and performance, with exception of the rollout at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center. The center is a joint VA and Department of Defense facility that officially moved to the Oracle record in March. 

The VA has plans to resume deployments of the Oracle record by the end of the 2025 fiscal year, Secretary Denis McDonough told lawmakers in April. 

It’s a “significant milestone,” for Oracle, Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, said in a statement. The EHR has already gone live across the DOD.