VA's Cerner EHR platform fails to deliver medications to veterans

The US Department of Veterans Affairs' ill-fated electronic health record upgrade hasn't just proved a problem for clinicians - it's also causing serious disruptions at VA pharmacies that have led to veterans not getting needed medication. Such was the word from witnesses at this week's hearing of the House Committee on …

[Jim Mitchell]

"At the five medical centers live on the new EHR today, veterans are receiving their prescriptions at the same rate they were prior to the facility converting from [the old system]," Sicilia said.

At the cost of quadrupling the pharmacy staff?

[Doctor Syntax]

"three out of seven Cerner pharmacy module improvement projects had been flagged by the VA as completed in four months"

Call me old-fashioned but I always believed in getting things right before putting them into production instead of having seven (at least) improvement projects.

[cookieMonster]

As always …. Never enough time to do it right, but loads of time to fix it after.

[Pascal Monett]

Yeah, but, it's Agile !

Although apparently not enough to actually make a working product.

Once again we hear of a medical project gone wrong. What is it with the mentality these days ? Hours to review a chart ? How many out-of-touch admins and managers have added their "ideas" to the workload of people who have better things to do, all in the name of "improving administration" ?

I do not see that it is the job of point-of-sale personnel to review charts. That's a job for managers. They can put down their coffee and doughnut and get to work.