Veterans Affairs reboots Oracle health records project for $330M

The US Department of Veterans Affairs has restarted a project to implement Oracle electronic health records in its hospitals after the project was suspended in 2023. The VA has confirmed to The Register that a $330 million payment to Oracle for Cerner software and support has been approved for four new Michigan sites selected …

[may_i]

Burn it with fire!

Nice to hear that it's not just half the hospitals in Sweden which are partly offline due to them trying to install Oracle's latest money pit.

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: Burn it with fire!

$9.9bn contract for *just* the VA EHR system - yikes !!

So much for not doing State Funded Healthcare. The Internet says they only have 170 Medical Centres.

[Steve Davies 3]

Doh! Don't they know what's about to hit them?

Elon the Musketeer will soon put a stop to that project as long as part of Trump's plan to get rid of the VA and all vet benefits.

The Musk tornado will touch down at the VA very shortly and wreak destruction everywhere.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Doh! Don't they know what's about to hit them?

They are only going to close the bit of the VA that deals with V, the role of A will be expanding and involve many more Oracle contracts.

It's the Platonic ideal of the US health care system. No actual patients or doctors, just billing

[elDog]

Re: Doh! Don't they know what's about to hit them?

Doesn't matter. Larry "Leisure Suit" Ellison will still get his money and pay the necessary tithe to trumusk (in digital coin, natch.)

[cyberdemon]

Re: Trumusk

For a shorter and snappier word for the abominable amalgam of Trump and Musk, you could try Mump

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Trumusk

I preferred DonElon

[isdnip]

Re: Doh! Don't they know what's about to hit them?

Larry is a Friend of Don. Filthy rich and mean as a kicked weasel. So sure, the system doesn't actually work right but Larry gave millions to Don's campaign and expects a payback, and this is part of it.

[Conrad Longmore]

Whoever knew..

Whoever knew that an Oracle installation would be later, over budget and not work properly? Must be first.

[James Anderson]

Whatever happened to there own system.

VA authored an open source system based on the venerable MUMPS database which ran for years and was used by several other organisations.

Before anyone shouts “legacy” it’s worth noting that there are two well supported current versions of MUMPs out there and while the default language is probably one of the worst ever the actual database is blindingly fast and incredibly flexible think a a nested Python Dictionary as persistent storage.

[Missing Semicolon]

Why does Oracle get this free pass?

The sell some stuff, and then nobody says "throw it away, it's broken! get something else!"

[Acrimonius]

Good bedfellows

Oracle and Cerner make good bedfellows in promising the earth and delivering just that, dirt, which is the opposite of cheap to dig the knife in further