The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Electronic Health Records Management (OEHRM) is looking for a dashboard that will help to coordinate its Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program with the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Health Agency (DHA).
Both agencies are undergoing efforts to replace legacy electronic health records with the Cerner Millennium system. However, DHA has already implemented a “datacenter-to desktop solution for tracking a centralized Integrated Master Schedule (IMS), program and resource management dashboard,” according to VA’s request for information (RFI).
The DoD dashboard has existing integrated EHRM views for VA, but VA currently faces barriers to accessing all IMS data.
“Currently, there are limitations to sharing IMS data across platforms as there are accessibility restrictions, either due to the shared location of where the IMS resides or MS Project licenses, or data coding and data mapping inconsistencies,” the RFI says. “In order to have a common view for EHRM stakeholders, especially for the joint DoD/VA sites, and meet the overarching program requirements for an integrated electronic health record in collaboration with DoD, OEHRM requires a VA/DHA integrated datacenter-to-desktop executive dashboard.”
VA said it hopes to create a new centralized dashboard, specific to OEHRM, to track EHRM program performance and resource management. The dashboard should also be able to integrate with the existing DHA dashboard.
The VA’s EHRM program has come under fire in recent months from Congress over a troubled roll-out and inaccurate cost estimates.
Initially, VA estimated the entire program would cost $10 billion over 10 years, including $4.3 billion in IT infrastructure costs. However, a VA OIG report revealed the $4.3 billion estimate was “not reliable,” as it did not account for $2.5 billion in “critical program-related IT infrastructure upgrade costs.”
VA is currently conducting a full lifecycle cost estimate of the EHRM program. Still, the agency noted the “overarching goal is to determine the most cost-effective approach” for the new dashboard.
