WASHINGTON—U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) reacted halfheartedly on Tuesday to a report that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was making strides in deploying its new electronic health record (EHR) program at 13 department facilities next year.
"Half of the issues that we keep seeing in implementation come down to the VA actually working with whatever vendor it is, and making sure that they've actually put together a procedure in place and some kind of standardization," Chefilus-McCormick told The Floridian.
According to VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence, the agency is "currently up and running with deployment activities at 11 sites across Michigan, Southern Ohio, and Indiana going live in 2026."
Lawrence added that the department will also begin activities at medical facilities in Cleveland and Anchorage later this month, calling it "real progress" in the Federal EHR program.
Rep. Cherifilus-McCormick seemed less than enthused.
"You just can't keep shuffling out different buyers or contractors without you being internally organized to give them the information that they need," Cherifuls-McCormick continued. "And the VA has consistently been failing when it comes to standardization."
Cherifilus-McCormick pushed for standardization from the VA during the last congressional term, but to no avail.
"They haven't made any progress when it comes to standardization, so switching without getting the VA to do their part is going to be a continuous revolving door - until the VA can actually be organized, have standardization, or even try to use AI to even get them standardized," Cherifilus-McCormick said.
And the common denominator to the problem?
The congresswoman said it wasn't for lack of funding, but the VA itself. According to the report, the agency signed a $10 billion contract, which later ballooned to over $16 billion with Cerner (now Oracle Health), to update its legacy health record system to easier exchange information with the Pentagon's current health record.
That, however, was stalled over technical difficulties and other problems. Currently, the EHR program is operational in just six of the VA's 170 medical centers.
"We throw more money, we pull money back from it. It's still the same issue," Cheriflus-McCorcmick said. "The common denominator is the VA."
