Here's a report from the Dark Daily about the increasing cost of the Cerner/VA contract for a new EHR to replace VistA (see: Implementing a New EHR at the Veterans Administration Is Taking Longer and Costing More than Earlier Estimates) and below is an excerpt from the article:
Originally estimated to cost $10 billion, a contract to replace the federal Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) electronic health record (EHR) system will now cost $16.1 billion, according to new estimates, and this has drawn increased scrutiny from regulators and the media. ProPublica reports that the initial deal signed in May 2018 between the VA and Cerner, one of the nation’s largest vendors of laboratory information systems (LIS) and anatomic pathology information systems, included a $10-billion ‘no-bid’ [i.e., sole source] contract to replace the VA’s aging VistA medical records system over 10 years. Since then, that estimate has ballooned to $16 billion, and with this latest increase, is now at $16.1 billion.
No need to panic. Is anyone really concerned about a mere $6B over-run on the sole source contract with Cerner to the current figure of $16.1B. To place this in context, it's 71% of the GDP of the country of Trinidad and Tobago (see: Trinidad and Tobago GDP). If the VA EHR go-live is successful, the general public will forget about the cost. Oops! The rollout date is getting extended again (see: VA Cerner EHR rollout to experience months-long delay). Below is an excerpt from this article:
The rollout, which is scheduled for three VA medical centers in Spokane, Wash., and Seattle in March 2020 "faces significant delays and unanticipated headaches," ....The report comes a few weeks after VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said the department is on track for the 10-year, $16 billion implementation....VA's new Cerner-based EHR will be interoperable with the DOD's new system. DOD also faced delays to its Cerner rollout after implementing the system at select locations in February 2017. The department paused the project the following January after clinician reports of workflow problems, including issues with lab report requests. DOD will now go live on its new EHR in September at four bases in California and Idaho.
I will continue to track these two major Cerner EHR deployments -- the VA and the DOD military system that are designed to interoperate (a good thing). I suspect it's a real possibility that both may be deployed at a few selected locations and then stop for some indeterminate time. Both the VA and the DOD will then declare a victory. I also believe that working on these huge federal contracts will inevitably and negatively effect the corporate culture of Cerner to something like SAIC. This is probably the reason why Epic did not aggressively pursue this military EHR contract (see: Cerner/Leidos/Accenture Secure EHR Contract for a Global Military EHR).
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