Telehealth & Telecare Aware – Telehealth and Telecare Aware

Telehealth & Telecare Aware  Telehealth and Telecare Aware

A surprise development not making the VA nor Oracle happy–and another monkey wrench for the committees. The National Association of Veteran Affairs Physicians and Dentists (NAVAPD), a national VA association that represents VA’s 20,000 doctors and dentists, sent a letter in mid-October to chairs and ranking members of the House and the Senate Veterans’ Affairs, Appropriations, Oversight and Government Reform and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panels. It recommends that the Oracle Health EHR rollout be paused until “critical concerns about patient safety, system performance, cost, and long-term feasibility are independently evaluated”. In addition, they cite concerns involving clinical workflow disruptions, delayed referrals, patient safety incidents, and rising program costs.

The letter, disclosed on 29 October, specifies that actions be taken by the committees before deployments continue: Surprisingly, the full text letter states that that the venerable VistA EHR still runs at all of VA’s 170 medical centers—including the sites transitioned over to the Oracle EHR. VistA is still used for longitudinal chart review. The letter also states that VistA is “currently best suited to meet our institutional mission.” which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of change. The dislike of a new EHR runs deep in this group but the workflow flaws are still many in the Oracle system. Another small surprise in the letter is this statement: “One