The Department of Veterans Affairs has partnered with the Institute for Defense Analyses to provide an analysis and full cost estimate of the agency's beleaguered electronic health record modernization program.  

During a House Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing Thursday, VA Office of Information and Technology Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Paul Brubaker said he estimated the effort will take 12 months to complete once it's launched later this month.  

The contract, he said, is aimed at ensuring that "once and for all, we capture all of these end-to-end costs and can present them to the committee as requested."  

WHY IT MATTERS  

Brubaker said the agency supported HR 4591, or the VA Electronic Health Record Transparency Act, with some important caveats.  

That bipartisan bill would require the VA to submit a report on EHR modernization costs every 90 days.  

"Depending on when this legislation is passed, the initial 90-day reporting time line may not allow sufficient time to complete EHRM's independent cost estimate that we're kicking off later this month," he said.

Following watchdog reports that the VA was not capturing all of the costs of the EHRM program, Brubaker said it became necessary to "understand the end-to-end costs."

"When that first cost estimate was scoped, it wasn't scoped adequately," he said.  

As with previous hearings, legislators raised concerns about the speed of the program and its total price tag.  

"I find it concerning that three years into a $16 billion program, VA is unable to account for actual expenses related to the project," said Rep. Frank Mrvan, D-Ind. Mrvan chairs the subcommittee on technology modernization.  

Brubaker also voiced his thoughts during the hearing on the Veterans' Cyber Risk Awareness Act, a Republican-led effort to educate veterans about the dangers of Internet-related disinformation, identity theft, scams and fraud.  

"While we support the intent of the legislation, the VA is not currently positioned to deliver effective security awareness marketing to all veterans," said Brubaker.

"More importantly, other federal agencies have specific mission taskings related to cybersecurity information ... awareness and prevention," he said, pointing to the work done by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.  

Meanwhile, news reports emerged this week that the data analytics company Palantir has obtained its first major contract with the VA.

FedScoop's Jackson Barnett reported that the $90 million deal will give the VA new tools to integrate information from across its systems into its Common Operating Platform.  

The tech may also process data on the EHR modernization program.  

THE LARGER TREND  

The VA's EHR modernization initiative has struggled since before its rollout at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, in October 2020.

After numerous delays (some COVID-19 related), the rollout was met with complaints from staff and concerns about patient safety.  

The VA undertook a strategic review, then announced it would pause the project through the end of 2021 as it worked through the findings.  

Still, it has signaled its willingness to keep pushing things along: In September, it allocated $134 million to Cerner to continue deployment at future sites.

"We continue to take contract actions as needed to set the right conditions to move forward efficiently once we make specific and readiness-based decisions on future ‘go live’ dates," a spokesperson told Healthcare IT News at the time.  

ON THE RECORD

"We have to make sure that we have a very defensible cost-attribution model, and IDA is charged with coming up with that," said Brubaker.

Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Twitter: @kjercich
Email: kjercich@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.