The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to open bidding for a five-year contract to maintain the IT and data services of VistA, the agency's homegrown EHR, according to FedScoop.
Former VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD, released the agency's plan to scrap VistA for a systemwide Cerner EHR during a news briefing in mid-2017. However, the VA will need to maintain its legacy EHR across the dozens of facilities still using it prior to the Cerner go-live, which it aims to complete over the next 10 years.
The technical, managerial and administrative services for VistA's EHR and imaging systems are currently run on Hewlett-Packard servers and an OpenVMS operating system. The VA's existing maintenance contract for VistA expires Oct. 3.
To ensure there aren't lapses in operations, the VA released a request for information Sept. 17, seeking maintenance and support services vendors for the EHR's imaging and architecture operations. The VA expects the contract to include a base year with four 12-month option additions.