Kurt DelBene, CIO of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), today promised to relaunch a troubled $10 billion healthcare software project.
DelBene said the VA’s controversial Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) project had “undergone a thorough reset since early 2023, focusing on integrating user feedback into system design…
“We are planning to restart deployment efforts in 2025”, he testified to a technology subcommittee of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
Cerner deployment had been paused.
VA contracted software provider Cerner to deliver the software in 2018.
In late 2021 Oracle agreed to buy Cerner. By 2022 VA had deployed the software to just five of its medical centers but facing an outcry over the systems failings, paused all new deployments in June 2022.
In late 2023 Larry Ellison said Oracle was rewriting Cerner’s software “a piece at a time” despite having spent $28 billion on the company.
His comments, as reported by The Stack, came after a VA audit found that Cerner software failures had caused "multiple events of patient harm” and "failed to deliver more than 11,000 orders for requested clinical services" in just eight months due to apparent system design errors.
VA CIOs testimony comes amid warnings
VA CIO DelBene was in front of the subcommittee on the same day that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) pointed to longstanding flaws in IT project delivery at the VA that it warned were unresolved.
Veterans Affairs is an executive branch department that amongst other responsibilities, runs America's largest integrated health care system.
Auditors at the GAO said that despite spending billions on IT annually, VA continued to run a 30-year-old financial software system, had failed to deliver the EHRM project, and neglected GAO guidance on procurement.
GAO has also made numerous recommendations on VA's IT governance, software licenses, and cloud computing. However, none of these have been implemented yet – GAO. December 12, 2024.
It also pointed out that VA “awarded 11,644 new contract actions categorized as IT between March 2018 and the end of fiscal year 2021.”
Shockingly, “VA did not provide evidence of CIO approval for 4,513 (or 39 percent) of these contract actions”. (This was before DelBene joined.)
VA had blamed a lack of automated systems to flag the need for CIO approval in its response to the audit. The GAO said that it had recommended the implementation of automated controls. The VA “agreed with our recommendation, but it has not yet reported progress.”
EMHR rollout, redux
Speaking of the renewed efforts to launch the Oracle/Cerner software suite, CIO DelBene said: “VA’s efforts have led to improved functionality, system stability, and user satisfaction among health care providers…”
“The reset period has allowed us to refine VA’s incremental approach, ensuring that our electronic health record system is not only reliable but also innovatively meets the needs of our Veterans and VA staff.”
The VA CIO further added: “We have [also] made significant progress on key Zero Trust initiatives, achieving over 95% enforcement of multi-factor authentication, encryption at rest, and encryption in-transit.”
GAO noted pointedly: “VA obligated about $21 billion in fiscal years 2022 through 2024 for a range of IT products, systems, and services…
“Given the magnitude of VA’s annual IT budget and the challenges that we have identified above, it is important that [VA] consider all available opportunities to ensure that its IT investments are acquired in the most effective manner possible [amid] delayed and costly modernization initiatives that have yet to deliver on promised system improvements.”
