One other nationwide outage this week has prompted a new concentrate on the U.S. Division of Veterans Affairs’ Digital Health Data Modernization effort.
WHY IT MATTERS
The Spokane VA Medical Middle stated it skilled an outage of its Oracle Health EHR system on Tuesday from roughly 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. native time, which prompted a technical investigation, NBC affiliate KHQ Information reported the next day.
Then on Thursday, CNBC reported that the VA confirmed the system outage had disrupted operations in any respect six VA medical facilities, 26 neighborhood clinics and distant VA websites working the beleaguered EHR.
In line with the authentic story, EHR customers skilled system freezes and couldn’t entry important functions.
Then, the VA reportedly instructed CNBC that the reason for the outage was a database efficiency drawback, and as soon as the platform was restarted, technical difficulties have been resolved. The disruption of the federal EHR system’s perform additionally prolonged to the U.S. Division of Protection, the Coast Guard and the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
THE LARGER TREND
On December 20, when the VA introduced it will start to plan for resuming EHR deployments in mid-2026, the company famous that it had been greater than 200 days for the reason that final system outage.
In the meantime, the Authorities Accountability Workplace stated on February 21 that whereas the VA’s EHR Modernization Program had made incremental enhancements to the system, rather more remained to be executed. The GAO stated that 1,800 requested configuration adjustments have been nonetheless excellent.
Then on February 24, Dr. Neil Evans, appearing program government director for the VA’s EHR Modernization Integration Workplace, up to date the U.S. Home of Representatives Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Know-how Modernization about enchancment efforts throughout the newest pause on system deployment.
The VA’s new EHR rollout has skilled quite a few delays for the reason that first part went stay on the VA Central Ohio Healthcare System in Columbus, Ohio, in August 2020.
Seema Verma, Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences government vp, joined Evans to supply lawmakers with an replace. She stated that through the newest reset interval, the corporate accomplished greater than 3,000 adjustments that improved system stability, added enhancements and streamlined sure capabilities.
Verma additionally laid out plans to quickly scale deployment of the EHR on the VA’s remaining 164 healthcare amenities.
“Sustaining the present tempo will take many years, which isn’t acceptable to anybody,” she stated.
We’ve reached out the VA and Oracle for statements concerning the new outage and can replace this story if they’re supplied.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT Information.
E mail: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT Information is a HIMSS Media publication.
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