The Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs failed to achieve interoperability during their deployment of their Cerner Millennium EHRs, according to a joint audit conducted by both departments' Offices of Inspector General.
At the time of the audit, Cerner's EHR had been deployed at 49 Defense Department facilities and one VA facility. The audit report, released May 5, said the departments failed to complete the following three actions:
- The departments did not consistently migrate patients' health data from legacy EHRs into the new Cerner EHR to create a single, complete patient EHR.
- The departments did not develop interfaces from all medical devices to the new Cerner EHR so patients' health data would automatically upload to the system from those devices.
- The departments did not ensure users were granted access to the new Cerner EHR for only the information needed to perform their duties.