Officials at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs told Congress the agency's EHR modernization effort could cost more and take more time than originally planned, Nextgov reports.
Four things to know:
1. The contract, which the VA signed with Cerner in May, set a $10-billion budget and 10-year timeline to put the VA on the same records system as the U.S. Defense Department.
2. By November, agency officials said the project was already running $350 million over budget and a new pricetag was set at $16 billion.
3. Now, during a Senate Appropriations subpanel Feb. 5, VA officials said that number is "an educated guess," according to Nextgov, and explained that the agency said it won't know the total budget for the project until it finishes the first round of field tests. The new Cerner system is currently scheduled to go live at three sites in the Pacific Northwest in March 2020.
"The rollout of these [initial] sites in Washington state … [is] going to give us a picture of how much this is actually going to cost," James Byrne, the department's acting deputy secretary, told the subpanel, according to Nextgov. "We're guessing right now on the amount. I think it's an educated guess, but after the [initial rollouts] I believe we're going to have a much clearer picture."
4. Lawmakers, such as Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., expressed concern over the budget increases, calling the overhaul "a recipe for disaster," particularly as VA officials noted they have yet to finalize an oversight body for the implementation.
"This process will be impossible without an entity at the top of the food chain to make final decisions," Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said, according to Nextgov. "In the meantime, important decisions are being made without formal interagency structure, and more importantly many decisions are being kicked down the road because there's nobody in place to make them."