Rep. Phil Roe (TN-01), Chair of the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee, today praised the VA’s announcement that it had finalized a $10 billion no-bid contract with Cerner Corp. for a new electronic health record system.
But — could this be an election-year rush into one of the biggest mistakes the VA has ever made?
As explained in MilitaryTimes, the goal of the Cerner contract is to bring the existing VA electronic record system in line with the Department of Defense’s own recently acquired Cerner-based system called MHS Genesis.
But if the MHS Genesis system doesn’t work as desired, then why would anyone, including Rep. Roe, want to expand it further?
Indeed, when Roe visited the first MHS Genesis test site a few months ago, The Pensacola News Journal described his reaction as follows:
Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, visited the first MHS Genesis test site, the hospital on Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington, and said the Department of Veterans Affairs might have made a mistake choosing to piggyback onto Genesis to replace its own legacy system.
Military Times recently affirmed the continued validity of those concerns about making a “mistake,” reporting that the DoD’s MHS Genesis program:
is under increased scrutiny, following the release of a government report that found the military’s program right now is neither operationally effective nor suitable for the department.
Just yesterday, The News Tribune dramatically illustrated this operational failure of MHS Genesis with a story that included this quote from an unhappy military patient:
“With the (new) system for pharmacy it's an all-day event” to get a new prescription filled, complained Alice Dowie, a retired Air Force Reserve officer who uses Madigan Army Medical Center on Joint Base Lewis-McChord. “You can take a number, go to the PX, go to the commissary, have lunch and still have a wait when you return. Not customer friendly for sick people.
In contrast to these reports of a failing new military system, the VA’s existing VistA program has a decades-long history of successful use and has even been praised as one of the best health record systems in existence.
So if the goal was to improve electronic transfer of military medical records to the VA, why didn’t the military just adopt the VA system? Good question.
And why is the VA now paying a $10 billion dowry to try and marry its princess of a system to an apparent DoD software frog? Another good question.
A previous post reported that Rep. Roe has received substantial contributions from Cerner Corp. These contributions are noteworthy in light of:
[1] Roe’s position as Chair of the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee;
[2] The no-bid nature of the VA- Cerner contract, despite its enormous dollar value;
[3] Roe’s own previous statement that the contract to merge the VA system with the DoD system could be a “mistake” for the VA — a statement he made after personally witnessing the new DoD system in “operation.”
[4] Roe’s apparent continued support for finalizing the Cerner contract even after his own negative observations were validated by independent government reports.
So why is Rep. Roe supporting this sweetheart no-bid deal that appears to throw good money after bad by rewarding the reported troubles with the DoD system with another $10 billion? Another good question.
To borrow from an old joke, maybe the question should be: “who does Rep. Roe choose to believe, his big corporate donor or his own lying eyes?”