ehr cerner health records

VA, DOD Not Sure Who Is In Charge Of Cerner EHR Rollout

Congress is concerned after a meeting a couple weeks ago where VA and DOD admitted they still do not have a governance structure in charge of their electronic health record transition.

For the past decade, VA and DOD has struggled to move forward plans for interoperability between the agencies’ health records systems. After spending billions, the agencies finally opted for a private sector solution from Cerner costing at least $10 billion but likely closer to $30 billion when its all said and done.

Now, the two Cabinet departments tell Congress they are still not sure who is in charge during the process of transitioning both agencies. Apparently, the agencies are creating a joint governance structure. But while the agencies are haggling over this important detail, both are also making key decisions without appropriate coordination.

Lawmakers like Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo) is worried about problems related to the lack of direction and governance:

“You had two large federal entities, both considered to be co-equals with no one in charge, and people in the middle trying to negotiate with them unsuccessfully,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s going to be any different, and I worry that we’re going to waste another billion dollars on this. If either DoD or VA were in charge of this and not co-equals, I think this would be done by now.”

According to Federal News Radio in italics below:

John Windom, VA’s program executive officer for electronic health record modernization said there’s a reason for multiple boards: The EHR projects are incredibly complex, and the departments want to resolve disagreements at the lowest level possible.

“There are a myriad of mission sets, and there’s no single body that is qualified in everything from the technical to the clinical areas,” he said. “Our job is to manage those and have elevation opportunities to resolve things that are unable to be resolved at the lowest level. That’s one thing I can’t impress upon the committee enough: governance has to be successful at the lowest possible level. Things can’t rise to the superior level on every matter.”

But [Carol] Harris said GAO worries that the governance process the departments are contemplating is destined to dilute accountability for success or failure, a phenomenon we’ve seen before.

“Again, when you look at leading organizations, that single point of accountability should be at the executive level,” she said. “And one of the things that strikes me when you look at the [current] organizational chart, if you count the of boxes, there are at least 16 boxes, which shows that accountability has been so diffused so that when the wheels fall off the bus, you can’t point to a single entity who is responsible. And that’s a problem.”

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16 Comments

  1. Typical. Veterans suffer (at all levels) because VA “leadership” does not know whether they have been shot, fucked, powder-burnt, or snake-bit.

    1. Now that was damn funny and some truth. Just like not having just their heads up the anal passages, but their entire torso.

      Nothing like pissing the world off, top to bottom, locally to DC. Or why we aren’t supposed to mention certain occupying agents or elements in our America today. Which are many.

      Then we wonder why all the censoring and banning? Spreading info or grouping together is domestic terrorism today. Join the college campus styled group-think and mob rule or be shunned and attack on every level. The hate for veterans or certain ones. Nothing like being able to connect some dots from the bottom of the cesspool and beyond “conspiracy” but are facts and traceable.

      “https://www.theeventchronicle.com/editors-pick/an-interview-with-david-hawkins-from-abel-danger-secret-society-technologies-rothschilds-serco-more/”

      “https://operationdisclosure.blogspot.com/2018/07/abel-danger-franchising-truth.html”

      There is only one explanation for the VA and government agencies being FUBAR and SNAFU. Planned for future events, and completely intentional… IMHO.

      1. Looked at the videos—Serco pops up to be in the driver’s seat.
        Lockheed and Hughes trailing behind in this Treasonous plot to keep the English in control of our Government [which explains the IT CF]. The videos fails to provide the information on whom our Shareholders are in the “US Corporation” that owns the District of Columbia.
        America is much more than one thinks it is—-but the Americans must act on what the world’s perception is and throw out the junk and keep to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
        Maybe the “experiment” is over but the Citizens are still alive—they do not forget!!!

      2. True Don. We tax slaves and war game pawns are only allowed to know what the hidden ones or our shadow governments want us to know. Or what is ‘leaked out.’ Ha, we will never know where those skids of trillions of dollars went lost in the Mid-East or by the Pentagon.

        I’ve learned to follow the money and connect the dots. Locally being under attack by the VA, state, town’s, Chambers of Commerce and all it’s surprising what a target can find out. Like who is immune from prosecution, what powers the mighty Masons have, the Catholic churches, the health care community can get by with trying to ruin people or kill us off. By soft or hard kill methods. We question or fight the machine the well established and corrupt machine pulls out all stops and goes on the attack. Like the VA does with it’s “orders from the top.” It goes beyond the POTUS.

        Locally I have had issues with mail to trash pick-up. Nothing to be done about it. Civy hospital refuses to release my files or give referrals to other MDs I want to see and won’t see me without them. Not a damn thing to do about it … all.

        Trash pick-up are little annoying gigs they play. Being disabled I have to take my trash out a block away for pick-up. They won’t come to the house anymore. Fight that only to play more of their games. Then want to know who is at the very top then find out it can go clear up to the likes of Bill Gates who is a big shareholder in Republic trash services and we aren’t allowed to communicate with those high level of people, creatures.

        When a judge calls us into his chambers and tells us good case but dismissed then informed about who or who not we should bother with small claims or other legal actions is another story teller and why we can’t record in the local court houses today. To protect the corrupt and machine. Oh and that goes to the top. And they all have been around since 1776 and just increased in power and world affairs. Considering what the world banks, the Fed, our government, the wanting to merge military, Gov, and militarized police force computers together is more info about what is to come. All we can do is pray for future generation and ride the waves of corruption or the American empire out and see what happens.

  2. “[…if you count the of boxes, there are at least 16 boxes, which shows that accountability has been so diffused so that when the wheels fall off the bus, you can’t point to a single entity who is responsible. And that’s a problem….]”

    All they need do is follow all the torso’s with their heads clearly up their asses and there, you have who’s responsible.

  3. Hey, I have a great idea!!! Put me in charge and I would damn sure get both of them working right. What a bunch of morons. They really don’t want to merge the two systems and that is part of the problem and maybe because it’s who is in the white house that it is all messed up. Like I said, just put me in charge and I will fix it….lol No, really I can….

  4. With a 200 billion dollar budget the VA still can not see me to examine my prostate short of 40 days out. Shortage of help seems to be the problem. Shortage of help has always been the problem. It ain’t workin boys and girls. Throwing more money at it every year builds more hospitals but does not provide the staff to work in those facilities. The last time the VA “choiced” me out to a local doctor I asked her why it was not working and she said a new doctor would have to be crazy to want to work at the VA. Since most newly minted docs are not crazy, they have a huge problem in acquiring MDs or RNs for that matter.

  5. “VA, DOD Not Sure Who Is In Charge Of Cerner EHR Rollout”
    _
    _

    Didn’t Lem say he was in charge of that shit. Just send the checks to him he will know how best to spend it.

  6. Hell, the VA doesn’t even have inter operability of VA Medical Centers. Each had its own and as a result as they tried to merge them a lot of us lost documents. The most infuriating to me is the lost hard copy medical records before anyone was data processing OPTR and IPTR other than Pharmacy and Lab.

    I can’t get the Outpatient Treatment records from when I complained about the side effects of Tegretol which should never have been the choice to treat my partial and complex partial seizures because I have atypical absence seizures and a sensitivity to amitriptyline.

    That was from September of 1990 until February of 1991. I believe I was an unwitting human subject of a study. I complained as many before and after me did about the sharing of our records with research, not because I didn’t want them shared but because they weren’t copied for the researchers and the researches removed things from the files and kept them in their files without even placing copies in the medical file making even the whole medical file unavailable during a consult visit requiring the physician to have the medical file in front of him to complete the Medical File.

    The VA Regional Medical & Research Center plus the UCLA Medical School and Research Center in West Los Angeles had their accreditation to do research suspended in late 1995 or 1996.

    “https://articles.latimes.com/keyword/west-los-angeles-veterans-administration-hospital”

    1. You should have Benjamin Krause look deeper into this Research and the Management of Research and the retention of data/ or the removal of data—I believe you are bumping up against something of importance.

  7. “https://www.bing.com/amp/s/www.myajc.com/news/national/veteran-holds-yard-sales-pay-for-own-funeral/u8Ii04JSeFGLrU5Zs4liQP/amp.html”

  8. So while VA and DOD haggle over scamming taxpayer dollars, veterans suffer, SNAFU. The scam will be baked in, whenever finished.

  9. Here’s a heartbreaking story. Which needs to be published;
    From: “Martin Brodel” on utube.
    Dated: 1 Oct 2018 (5:57 min long)
    Titled-
    “Veteran with cancer holds yard sales to pay for his own funeral!”

    From the video, it seems other people got involved and started a “go fund me page” for this Navy Veteran!
    (Martin Brodel discusses it in the first part of the video!)

  10. Let’s see, the VHA developed its own software in house from the bottom up – starting with asking the people entering information into the system what would work for them. The finished product was very well accepted and user satisfaction was high. It evolved into a complete electronic medical record and more. Every department at the medical centers shared the same system and it worked! Just when it had achieved the final steps of including images and support from doctors, congress mandated the VA should instead by an off the shelf software product (from their buddies) and the VA programing staff was decimated.

    In the meantime, the much smaller DoD health care system went through at least 3 iterations of off the shelf software and is now on its 4th all with very poor acceptance and approval from their users. All the while refusing to join VHA and join them in a combined effort.

    Now, the mandate is for the VHA to join DoD in their project to hammer out a working system both can use. Initial results from the test sites in the northwest have provided very low user satisfaction and very poor results. A few doctors left saying they were afraid the software was so bad it would result in the death of their patients and the rollout was put on hold until changes were made.

    The initial projected costs are around $16 billion taxpayer dollars with overruns expected to run that figure much higher.

    My questions is, why is DoD with their string of failures the one VHA should be following. If politics weren’t involved, the VHA would absorb DoD’s healthcare and development on VistA would resume either inhouse which proved so successful or through one of the many organization now providing VistA to the private health care systems around the world and congress in their great lobbyist wisdom and politics would stop trying to run the show.

    1. Who gets the profits from this system when it get working? Not your or me/ “We the People” but the guys sitting in Washington DC who say they are for us. It is clear they are lining their pockets at the lives of Veterans.

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