A U.S. Army veteran filed a lawsuit seeking an undisclosed amount of damages from Oracle Health and the federal governments, alleging that the Department of Veterans Affairs' troubled rollout of the Oracle Health EHR system led to a delay in his cancer diagnosis, The Spokesman-Review reported Dec. 4.
Charlie Bourg, the Eastern Washington-based Army veteran who filed the lawsuit, has been a longtime critic of the Oracle Health EHR system. In 2022, Mr. Bourg visited Washington, D.C., and asked lawmakers to end the EHR program.
In December 2020, Mr. Bourg had a blood test at Spokane VA hospital, one of the hospitals where the Oracle system was piloted. Mr. Bourg's lawsuit claims that a series of "system defects" while trying to receive follow-up care with a urologist meant that he was not diagnosed with prostate cancer until October 2021. After receiving surgery, Mr. Bourg was informed that the cancer had spread to other areas of his body and that he had between one and two years to live.
In September, the VA announced it would resume the $16 billion Oracle rollout in the summer of 2024. Oracle did not respond to Becker's request for comment.