Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough on Wednesday said his “confidence has been shaken” in the agency’s new Electronic Health Record Management rollout after reports of outages and patient harm.
McDonough’s comments came during his monthly press conference on June 21, the day before President Joe Biden signed the VA Health Record Transparency Act of 2021.
The legislation, signed by Biden on Thursday, holds the VA accountable and increases transparency by requiring the VA Secretary to submit periodic reports to Congress about the costs, performance metrics and outcomes for EHRM.
According to a story in the Spokesman-Review over the weekend, a draft Inspector General’s report found 148 cases of patient harm after EHRM went live in Spokane, Washington.
While McDonough did not confirm the existence of the draft report during his press conference, he did say the department’s safety expert team is looking into the patient harm cases. He added that it has yet to be proven that EHRM did not cause patient harm.
“I do now know that there are instances of patient harm and that there could be a range of factors that contribute to that,” he said.
The VA awarded a 10-year, $16 billion contract to Cerner in May 2018 to upgrade its current EHR.
“This is the option that we had when we arrived,” McDonough said. “We’re executing as diligently as we can on that, as transparently as we can, and working closely, for example, with Congress and the IG, and we’ll continue to do that. But I’m not ready to answer hypotheticals about if this doesn’t work.”
McDonough said that he has been in touch with Cerner, EHRM’s vendor, about the problems and that some work has taken place over the past 10 days.
“That seems to have had a major impact on that,” he said.
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The VA IG also released three reports last summer that raised concerns surrounding EHRM’s deployment. Two of those reports raised issues with cost estimates and reporting.
McDonough said he has “gotten smarter on these reports over the course of the last couple of months” and is in contact with the IG.
“The kind of back and forth that we’re currently engaged with the IG on is really, really important to us getting better at what we do,” he said. “That kind of ability to exchange candid views, including on draft reports, is really important to us getting better.”
McDonough recently testified before the House Veterans Affairs Committee that VA would not go forward with the EHRM rollout if he found issues with it would cause a threat to veterans.
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“If I had known what I know today when I was appearing before Congress, I would have answered those questions differently,” he said during his press conference.
The EHRM rollout at Boise, Idaho will go forward on July 23 as planned, even though it has been pushed back until next year for the Puget Sound and Portland VA Health Care Systems.
The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee plans to hold a hearing on the EHRM program on July 20.
McDonough also said that $365 million in resources has been released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help address unsheltered homelessness and homeless encampments.
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“That package includes funds set aside specifically to address homelessness in rural communities and those are vet populations we’re especially focused on,” he said.
VA has a goal of getting 38,000 veterans into permanent housing this year. By the end of May, VA had placed 13,400 veterans into permanent housing at an average of 2,700 placements each month, said Monica Diaz, executive director of VA’s Homeless Programs Office.
Diaz said veteran homelessness declined by nearly 50 percent from 2010 to 2016. She said VA has helped over 950,000 veterans and their families become permanently housed, rapidly housed or to avoid homelessness.
Since 2016, 83 communities in Virginia, Delaware and Connecticut have effectively ended veteran homelessness, she added.
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Even with that good news, Diaz said that from 2016 to 2020, veteran homelessness declined by only 6 percent.
“At VA we believe that just as there’s no one path to entering homelessness, there’s no one path to exiting homelessness,” she said. “Instead, it is our job to take as many pathways as possible so veterans can choose a road that fits their journey.”
She specifically pointed to HUD-VASH, supportive services and other programs that are available for veterans at risk of homelessness through VA. Veterans can also call 1-877-424-3838 for help.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.