Buckeye Reporter

Download Production Quality Footage of Sen. Brown’s Exchange HERE

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In case you missed it: yesterday, during a Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Hearing to consider the nomination of Tanya J. Bradsher to be Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) pressed Bradsher on VA’s electric health record modernization effort.

Following Brown’s urging, U.S. Secretary of VA McDonough paused the rollout as veterans and VA workers at Chalmers P. Wylie VA Ambulatory Care Center in Columbus expressed confusion and faced unnecessary problems in accessing critical health care services. VA also modified the contract with Oracle Cerner which is building the Electronic Health Records (EHR) system at VA facilities across the country.

“We know that the botched electronic record rollout has contributed to four veterans’ deaths. This is unacceptable. What steps will you take to protect veterans getting care from VAs that are currently using Oracle Cerner, while working through the necessary fixes?” Brown asked.

“First and foremost, making sure that our clinicians there know that we will support them and that also any of the changes that they are seeing now through Dr. Evans and our leadership with the electronic healthcare record team being able to address those issues, so we can quickly look at resolution, especially dealing with downtime. That seems to be a challenge that we’re still working through. So, keeping those open lines of communication, making sure those 5 locations have the support that they need to be able to continue to execute to take care of our veterans because that’s the most important mission we have,” said Bradsher.

In May, VA announced that it has modified its contract with Oracle Cerner and in April, VA announced that it would discontinue the deployment of EHR system and work to improve the program at sites currently using system – including the Chalmers P. Wylie VA Ambulatory Care Center in Columbus. In March, Brown pressed VA and Oracle Cerner officials about patient safety, interoperability, and readiness concerns regarding VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) rollout.

Brown, along with U.S. Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Patty Murray (D-WA) spearheaded a legislative push in March to deliver a complete overhaul of VA’s EHR program.

In October, Brown visited the Columbus facility with then-VA Deputy Secretary Donald M. Remy and heard firsthand from facility leadership, frontline staff, and veterans regarding the EHR issues at facility. In July, Brown spoke with VA officials at a Senate Veterans’ Affairs hearing about patient safety, interoperability, and readiness concerns regarding VA’s EHR system rollout.

Original source can be found here.