“… There was even talk of having Sherman become a temporary government employee to carry out the review, two former officials said, but he declined.”
“Instead, the White House reassigned an official named Genevieve Morris from the Department of Health and Human Services to the VA. Wilkie (then acting secretary) signed the Cerner contract in May 2018, and Morris took over the office in charge of implementing it. She had worked on software implementations in small outpatient settings as a private-sector consultant, but she had never led anything on a large scale.”
“The industry experts whom the VA had consulted emphasized that clinicians need to lead the program since they’re the people who’ll actually have to use the software. “These initiatives should be regarded as clinical projects, not IT or technical projects,” said Thomas Payne, the medical director of IT services at UW Medicine in Seattle.”
“But tensions flared up between the VA’s clinical leadership and Morris’ implementation office. “I got dismissed from working on this because I would say ‘this is a problem.’ They don’t want to hear about any problems,” said Stephan Fihn, a former director of clinical system development and evaluation who retired from the agency in February.”
“When Morris’ office did try to recruit clinicians to the effort, clinicians would say they couldn’t spare the time for fear of missing or delaying appointments, according to a July email among VA officials working on the program. In another email, one of Morris’ deputies warned that unless they secured the support of clinical leadership, “We will fail.”
“Officials also began encountering more shortcomings in Cerner’s product. It didn’t come with features for some of the VA’s core specialties, such as Agent Orange exposure, spinal cord injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, because these conditions aren’t common in the general population. “Cerner’s focus is on management of their products, where VA’s focus is broader and encompasses activities that fall outside of the products Cerner will provide,” Ash Zenooz, a VA radiologist who became the chief medical officer working on the implementation, cautioned in a program management plan.”
“Zenooz’s report noted that Cerner’s incomplete plan to migrate patient data “provides opportunity for patient…” Read the full article here.
Source: The VA Shadow Rulers’ Signature Program Is “Trending Towards Red” – By Isaac Arnsdorf, November 1, 2018. ProPublica.
