The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced on Saturday that it has officially deployed its Oracle Cerner electronic health record (EHR) system at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (Lovell FHCC) near Chicago – the only healthcare facility to serve both Department of Defense (DoD) and VA patients.
The deployment is the VA’s first since announcing a reset of its Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program in 2023, while the VA and its contractor Oracle Cerner focus on improvements at the five other sites where the EHR system is currently deployed.
It also marks the DoD’s final deployment of its EHR program, which it calls MHS GENESIS.
“This joint deployment of the Federal EHR at Lovell FHCC will provide a more coordinated experience for patients and the clinicians who care for them,” said Dr. Neil Evans, acting program executive director of the EHRM Integration Office. “Additionally, while VA continues with the broader reset of our electronic health record modernization program, we are learning lessons from this deployment to inform our future decisions.”
Lovell FHCC is the only fully integrated, jointly run VA and DoD healthcare system in the country. It serves about 75,000 patients each year including veterans, service members and their families, and Navy recruits.
The joint deployment aims to ensure a seamless experience for all patients who visit the facility, with a single fully integrated EHR system.
“The launch of the Federal EHR at Lovell FHCC will help DoD and VA deliver on the promise made to those who serve our country to provide seamless care from their first day of active service to the transition to veteran status,” said Lester Martinez-Lopez, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “A joint electronic health record system demonstrates the power of technology to improve health care delivery, and we look forward to continued collaboration with our VA partners.”
The VA deployed its EHR system at Lovell FHCC despite the ongoing pause of other deployments. Under its EHRM program reset, VA has redirected resources to the five sites where the EHR is currently in use: Spokane VA Health Care System, VA Walla Walla Health Care, Roseburg VA Health Care System, VA Southern Oregon Health Care, and VA Central Ohio Health Care System.
The agency said it continues to “closely examine” the technical issues at those five sites using the EHR system, and it is developing success criteria to determine when to resume deployments at other sites. The agency hopes to resume EHRM deployments this summer.
“As the first deployment at a larger, more complex VA health care facility, the experience at Lovell FHCC will help inform these decisions,” the VA said. “Additional deployments will not be scheduled until VA is confident that the new EHR is highly functioning at all current sites and ready to deliver for veterans and VA clinicians at future sites.”
