Veterans Affairs officials told members of the House VA Committee that the agency may have to rely on its legacy EHR system for another 5 to 10 years until the Cerner implementation is completed, Federal New Network reported March 7.
"In essence, we are supporting two EHR systems simultaneously, until the Cerner implementation is complete," said Daniel McCune, VA's executive director of software product management. "In the interim, VistA remains our authoritative source of veteran data."
Although VA officials told the subcommittee that the legacy EHR is not suited for meeting the agency's long-term healthcare needs, Mr. McCune said it plans to move the system to the cloud to provide uninterrupted care to patients.
Currently, 20 instances of VistA have been moved to the cloud this year, and the VA plans to migrate another 54 instances of it to the cloud later this year.
This would cost the VA about $70,000.
The move comes as the Oracle Cerner EHR implementation, which has been ongoing since 2020, has been plagued with delays and outages.
Currently, there are two proposed bills aimed at scrapping the entire project.