LAWRENCE: VA Secretary Denis McDonough didn't contradict her. MURRAY: I've heard from providers who are burnt out trying to navigate this broken interface, patients who were unable to get medicine they rely on because of system malfunctions and even a patient who received a late cancer diagnosis because of flaws in the system. LAWRENCE: That's Washington Senator Patty Murray talking at a hearing last week on VA spending. PATTY MURRAY: The rollout at VA sites at Washington state has been an ongoing disaster with new disruptions still happening. But so far, it's only rolled out in five sites, including Spokane. The decades-long push to update VistA and make it compatible with the Pentagon's health system wrapped up in 2017 when the Trump administration bought the Cerner system for $10 billion over 10 years in a no-bid contract. LAWRENCE: The Department of Veterans Affairs pioneered electronic health records with a program called VistA back in the 1990s.
On top of the emotions he's feeling, the grief for his family, his grandchildren, Bourg resents that veterans in Spokane and four other sites have had to deal with the troubled Cerner program.īOURG: I was kind of irritated because, basically, they'd used us as guinea pigs on a system that they had never tested, and Cerner was saying it was OK. LAWRENCE: Bourg says it might have been treatable, but his referral had disappeared into a glitch in the system. And it came back that the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes between my spine and my stomach where they couldn't get to it. He finally saw one 10 months after the original referral.īOURG: And at that time, they found out there was, I believe, a tumor on my prostate. She asked why he'd never gone to the urologist. Months later, he saw his primary doc again. So she told me that they would contact me when urology got the results if they needed to see me. And at that time she goes, got it this time. He noticed his VA doctor was having trouble with the new program.īOURG: She tried to put in the referral to urology, and it took her three times to get it in. QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Charlie Bourg is a Vietnam vet living north of Spokane, Wash. NPR's Quil Lawrence spoke to some of the vets affected.ĬHARLIE BOURG: Well, I had gone to my doctor's office for another yearly appointment, I believe.
It had been introduced at only five VA sites. It abruptly stopped all work on its $16 billion rollout of the Oracle Cerner electronic health system. Now, billions of dollars later, the VA has halted that update after multiple breakdowns and four deaths connected to system errors. It took decades for the Department of Veterans Affairs to begin updating its electronic health record system.
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