Murray Questions VA Secretary on EHR Contract Renegotiation, Presses for User Satisfaction Targets at Senate Veterans' Hearing on VA Budget

Hearing

"Yesterday, VA announced that an agreement for a new EHR contract had been made with Oracle. It's really important to see that VA is prioritizing reliability and responsiveness, and patient safety across the contract, so I appreciate that. Just last week, GAO released a report indicating that VA had not established target goals to assess user satisfaction--and that until it does, VA lacks a basis for determining when satisfaction has improved enough for the system to be deployed at any other sites.

I support the reset period as you know, and I support efforts to move forward, but only after--of course--you are confident about the safety and effectiveness of the system and have clear, established satisfaction markers--and what matters is what the providers and veterans on the ground think. Our veterans deserve the best health care we can offer, and it's our job to make sure that VA and Oracle Cerner really get this right. When do you expect to have a revised request for the EHR account in Fiscal Year 2024, as well as an estimate of whether you need the funds requested to support the rollout in the IT and medical facility accounts?

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Do you have plans to establish targets to assess user satisfaction?

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Are there any changes that you have made, and plan to make, based on provider feedback at this point?"

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