Ken Glueck, executive vice president of Oracle, urged Congress to continue to support the Cerner EHR rollout at the Department of Veterans Affairs after legislators proposed two bills aimed at scrapping the entire project.
Mr. Glueck wrote in a Feb. 10 Oracle blog post that scrapping the Cerner rollout, which has been ongoing since October 2020, would take healthcare for veterans backwards, as the move would cause the department to revert back to its legacy VA EHR system.
"The point of a modern EHR is so that interacting with your health record is as easy as interacting with a Starbucks Barista," Mr. Glueck wrote.
Mr. Glueck also pointed out that the bills, H.R. 608 and H.R. 592, call for putting some VA centers on a more modern EHR system, while leaving the rest on VA's legacy EHR system, VistA.
Mr. Glueck said both of these bills would "abandon modernization."
"You would create an untenable patchwork, adding complexity, reducing interoperability and increasing cost," said Mr. Glueck.
Although the current rollouts of the Cerner system across the VA have been plagued with outages and delays, Mr. Glueck said the company is "ready to be held accountable" and is looking to improve the program.
"The problem with modernization is it's always hard and it's always worth doing," wrote Mr. Glueck. "Rather than give up and pull the plug, let's lead and finish what we started. Remember, it's about the veterans."