The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced on Thursday an 11-month extension of its contract with Oracle Cerner to support the agency’s Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program, with a focus on “improved fiscal and performance accountability.”
The announcement comes after the VA and Oracle Cerner announced a one-month extension of the contract last month to give the two parties more time to negotiate terms that will support the long-term success of the program.
“This announcement is a testament to VA’s commitment to keeping the best interests of veterans, VA providers, and taxpayers at the forefront while maximizing resources in a fiscally restrained environment,” VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher said in a press release.
“Executing the second option period of the contract allows VA and Oracle Health to continue to drive forward on the goals of the reset and future deployments. VA remains committed to holding ourselves and our vendors accountable for resolving challenges with deployment of the Federal EHR and moving forward productively,” she added.
Through the agreement, the VA and Oracle Cerner will partner to deploy the EHR system as part of the program “reset.” The VA announced the reset period last year, putting all future deployments on pause while the agency and Oracle Cerner make technical improvements to the system.
Nevertheless, the VA said this contract will support both potential pre-deployment and deployment activities at new sites in fiscal year 2025 “once VA determines reset goals have been met.”
“Negotiations for the second option period are focused on two main objectives: 1) supporting value-added services, such as system improvements and optimizations, and 2) achieving better predictability in hosting, deployment, and sustainment – all while keeping an eye on fiscal responsibility,” the VA explained.
“These objectives align with and facilitate VA’s reset efforts towards resuming site deployments in fiscal year 2025,” it added. “VA will continue to evaluate and align future option periods with the best path forward for its Federal EHR modernization efforts.”
In a company press release, Oracle Cerner said the new contract is “a testament to the progress” the two parties have made in recent years to better support veterans.
“VA’s intent to resume deployments in the next fiscal year is a significant milestone that reflects the hard work our collective teams have done to improve the system today, as well as confidence in our shared ability to continually evolve the EHR over time to meet the needs of both practitioners and patients,” said Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences.
Last year, the VA successfully renegotiated a tougher EHRM contract to hold Oracle Cerner accountable for technical fixes to the program whose rollout has been beset with difficulties.
The renegotiation updated the contract from a five-year term to five one-year terms – that way the agency can renegotiate each year if necessary. It also included larger fines or “monetary credits” Oracle Cerner will need to pay if it does not meet expectations, increasing the VA’s ability to hold the contractor accountable.
