The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs launched a shared electronic health record system at a Chicago hospital on Saturday, completing the military’s adoption of the system and moving the VA a step closer to restarting its rollout across its 172 medical centers and clinics.
VA officials said the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, which serves more than 75,000 patients per year, adopted the Oracle Cerner electronic health record system — the first launch for a VA site since it paused the program in April 2023 amid concerns over patient safety, training and user-friendliness.
The VA signed a $10 billion contract with Cerner for a systemwide electronic medical record program in May 2018, selecting the same contractor as the DoD to ensure that service members and veterans would have a continuous digital health record from their initial accession until death.
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While the rollout within the Defense Health Agency caused appointment cancellations and some delays in care related to training and implementation, the rollout at the VA has been fraught with issues. In July 2022, the VA Office of Inspector General found that the system caused harm to at least 149 patients at one facility, including a suicidal veteran who had to call the VA’s crisis line after his psychiatry referral was lost.
The Defense…
