Following proposed legislation that would scrap the Department of Veterans Affairs Oracle Cerner EHR implementation, Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck is hitting back in a Feb 3. letter, saying that to scrap the project "ensures snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
Mr. Glueck pointed to the Defense Department's adoption of the Cerner EHR and the age of the VA's previous EHR system, VistA, as reasons to continue with the VA Cerner rollout.
However, Mr. Glueck admitted that the decision to introduce a new EHR for the VA while dealing with COVID-19 patients was a mistake.
"Modernization requires change and some short-term pain for the long-term benefits of a modern technology infrastructure, a modern user interface, and a modern set of workflows. Moving from customized, one-off workflows to standard, commercial-off-the-shelf workflows is always hard to implement and always worth doing," Mr. Glueck said. "A modernization project of this scale and scope necessarily involves time to untangle the decades of customized processes established in support of VistA, which inevitably involves challenges."