McMorris Rodgers demands ‘ glaring inefficiencies’ of VA records system be corrected

Eastern Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R- Spokane, sent a letter Wednesday to top officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs demanding that improvements be made to “glaring inefficiencies” in a new $ 16 billion health records program.

“The VA is at an inflection point on the Oracle Cerner Electronic Health Records program. Our nation’s veterans, and the hardworking men and women who serve in VA medical facilities, deserve an electronic health record system that is competent – a system that they can trust. The EHR meets neither of those standards right now,” wrote McMorris Rodgers in the Sept. 14 letter.

The document was sent to Dr. Terry Adirim, executive director of EHR Modernization Integration for the VA and Dr. David Massaro, acting senior advisor.

As of the time of publication Wednesday, McMorris Rodgers had not received a reply from the two VA officials.

McMorris reiterated that she intends to keep pressure on agency leaders to address failures in the system. Earlier this summer, the VA Office of Inspector General found that glitches in the digital platform had harmed 149 veterans at Mann- Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane.

In April, McMorris Rodgers accompanied Donald Remy, deputy secretary of the VA, on a tour of the facility. During that visit, the records system went down for 45 minutes, demonstrating what she told the federal official was a history of instability.

“With Eastern Washington at the forefront of the VA’s difficult and harmful rollout of the Oracle Cerner EHR program, I continue to have concerns about the VA’s efforts to stabilize the program and make it functional for our nation’s veterans,” she reiterated to Adirim and Massaro.

The series of system failures, she said, have resulted in dangerous and potentially life- threatening consequences for patients. For example, she pointed out that Chewelah veteran Charlie Bourg is now battling terminal cancer that went untreated for months due to problems within the system.

On at least two occasions in Spokane, local veterans had their medications mistakenly stopped due to a problem with health records. One veteran was hospitalized after heart medication was dropped off the list in records, she said.

McMorris Rodgers said the letter followed a conversation she had with Adirim and Massaro on Tuesday about her concerns. She told the officials that the VA must get the records system fully functional before it is rolled out at any more facilities.

The new system launched two years ago at Mann- Grandstaff with VA plans to slowly replace the older electronic health records model still being used by nearly all of the agency’s more than 1,200 facilities nationwide.

Several months ago, the VA Office of Inspector General’s draft report on the situation found that senior officials in the agency approved the system’s continued launch despite knowing that glitches had not been fully resolved.

Fo l l ow i n g the release of that report, the VA announced that it was pausing deployment of the new system to additional medical facilities until next year.