The House and Senate Appropriations Committees released their first package of fiscal year (FY) 2024 appropriations bills on Sunday including a bill that provides over $6 billion in IT funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with a cut in the White House’s request for money to fund VA’s electronic health records program.
The 1,050-page appropriations package contains six spending bills necessary to keep a subset of government agencies funded before the current continuing resolution (CR) spending agreement expires on Friday and triggers a partial government shutdown. The bills cover spending for FY2024, which ends on Sept. 30.
The package’s Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Act provides the VA and related agencies $135.25 billion in non-defense discretionary funding, as well as $172.5 billion in mandatory funding.
“This bill honors the sacred obligation we have to take care of our veterans when they come home by fully funding veterans’ medical care and benefits and delivering essential resources VA needs to operate,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and chair of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.
According to a summary of the bill, it provides $6.4 billion for VA IT systems. In addition, the bill provides $1.3 billion in funding for the VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) program – $529 million below President Biden’s budget request.
The appropriators said the EHRM funding figure is reflective of the agency’s decision to reset the program, while the VA and contractor Oracle Cerner focus on improvements at the five sites where the EHR system is currently deployed.
The only exception to the full-stop on EHRM deployment activities is at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center near Chicago – the only healthcare facility to serve both Department of Defense and VA patients. The new EHR system is scheduled to go-live at this site later this month.
However, VA Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters last week that the VA is still testing a number of features at the North Chicago site and it will make a decision “in the next couple of weeks” on whether or not to go live.
“We want to make sure this is ready, and if it’s ready, we will go live,” added VA Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal. “And if it’s not, we will do what it takes to get ready to go live. And so, I know that date is coming up, but our teams are working every single day, and the Dep Sec [Tanya Bradsher] really has her eyes on this very closely.”
