VA to reroute its supply chain system plans, divest from $2.2B project

The Department of Veterans Affairs will divest from its $2.2 billion project that aimed to modernize the supply chain by replacing 12 legacy supply management systems. 

Lawmakers urged the VA to scrap the program in early 2022 after the VA's Office of Inspector General found the system lacked 44 percent of the 90 "high-priority requirements" needed for daily operations. 

In a Jan. 31 letter, members of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and two House subcommittees said there were "serious cost considerations" alongside the management requirements issue and asked the VA to launch a different platform. 

As a response to this call from legislators, the VA said in a Dec. 13 news release it will cancel future deployments of the Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support system. 

Over the next few months, the VA plans to build its new Office of Enterprise Supply Chain Modernization and prepare another supply chain logistics solution in 2023. 

"As the largest integrated healthcare system in the country, our supply chain logistics solution must meet the needs of the 1,298 medical facilities in our network and the millions of Veterans that we serve," Michael Parrish, the VA's chief acquisition officer, said in the release. "This transition will help us do exactly that."

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