“The Department of Veterans Affairs said it will spend nearly $5 billion over the next 10 years to maintain its legacy electronic health record while it develops and implements a separate, multi-billion-dollar system at medical facilities across the country.”
“VA told the Government Accountability Office it spent $2.3 billion to maintain and develop the Veterans Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) between 2015 and 2017. The department estimated it’ll spend a total of $426 million this year on the legacy system — with a total of $4.89 billion over the next 10 years.”
“But VA’s cost estimates to sustain and develop VistA are under dispute and likely unreliable, the Government Accountability Office said this week, raising congressional concerns that the department’s estimates to replace the legacy system with Cerner’s Millennium health record are also inaccurate…”
“The challenge, Harris said, is that VA hasn’t been able to fully define the scope, environment and technical performance of VistA since the department began decentralizing the electronic health record shortly after the system’s inception. To date, VistA, which supports 150 applications and operations of 1,500 VA medical centers and other facilities, has 130 separate instances.” Read the full article here.
Source: VA’s plans for maintaining VistA spark cost concerns for new electronic health record – By Nicole Ogrysko, July 26, 2019. Federal News Network.
