SPOKANE — Newly appointed Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher toured Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA hospital Monday, hearing concerns from clinicians and veterans affected by a computer system that has hobbled veterans’ health care.
The Oracle Cerner electronic health record system was first put in place at Mann-Grandstaff in 2020 before a planned rollout across the country. The program was later introduced to a VA hospital in Walla Walla and locations in Oregon and Ohio before the department halted the system’s planned adoption across the United States until the problems are fixed.
That “reset” announced in April followed reports of the system frequently crashing, mixing up medications and causing dangerous delays in treatment.
Former VA Deputy Secretary Donald Remy resigned in April amid fallout from the scandal. The Senate confirmed Bradsher for the post on Sept. 12.
In remarks at a news conference following her tour of the Spokane VA hospital, Bradsher said she had a “very busy, robust morning listening” to hospital clinicians “frustrated” by the Oracle Cerner electronic health record system.
“They are definitely doing everything they can to take care of our veterans and are doing so much with a challenging electronic health record,” she said of the Mann-Grandstaff hospital staff. “And so they are definitely committed to continuing to work through this, and I’m grateful that they spent so much time with me this morning to articulate some of the challenges that they’re having.”
Asked what specifically she learned, Bradsher pointed to hospital workers who showed her the “workarounds” they have created to take care of veterans under the current system.
Even though the Oracle Cerner system will not be adopted elsewhere during the “reset” period — with the exception of a planned launch in March 2024 at a joint VA-Defense Department facility in Chicago — it is still in place in Spokane and at the other four hospitals where it had already been launched.
Bradsher indicated the reset has no end date in sight.
“We will stay in reset and work through those challenges,” she said.
Dr. Neil Evans, head of the Electronic Healthy Record Modernization Integration office, said at the news conference that it will “take the time we need” to improve the records system.
“We don’t have a date yet,” he said. “But we do feel an urgency.”
Asked what improvements are needed, Evans said the “technology has to be rock solid.”
“The performance has to be there. Where we don’t have unexpected downtime, where we don’t have incidents that are impacting the ability to deliver care,” he said. “There are then many other changes that we are implementing about how the system is configured to better meet the needs of our patients. And we’re happy we’re making those changes based on dialogues with end users, many of whom are veterans.”
As part of her listening sessions, Bradsher also toured the VA hospital in Walla Walla on Monday.
