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Today, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared, at the start of the subcommittee’s oversight hearing to assess the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) deployment of the Oracle Cerner electronic health record system at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, Illinois:

Good afternoon. The Subcommittee will come to order.

I want to welcome our witnesses to discuss the results of the Oracle Cerner EHR implementation at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago.

Lovell is the only fully integrated VA-Department of Defense health care facility in the country

It is also the first large, complex medical center where VA and Oracle have installed the EHR system.

Secretary McDonough approved the go-live on March 9th as an exception to the overall pause on the Electronic Health Record Modernization program that has been in place since October 2022.

That was despite the Reset effort not yet producing any game-changing improvements, despite the VA pharmacy organization’s objections, and despite the facility not completing its infrastructure improvements.

The results at James A. Lovell tell us a lot.

I want to thank Dr. Buckley for travelling here today to help us understand the reality of the situation.

The reality is, this is the same system with the same problems that we have seen elsewhere.

I commend Dr. Buckley and his team for how well they have managed the challenges, and I am glad other parts of VA have been able to flood the facility with resources.

Their ability to work around the problems is commendable.

But make no mistake, despite all the spin, the problems have not disappeared.

And, as a large, complex medical center, Lovell has revealed new flaws in the Oracle Cerner EHR.

The Committee staff visited James A. Lovell twice, and the employees are reporting the same frustration, hypervigilance, and burnout that the managers of the other four facilities testified about last September.

They have managed to keep the doors open and provide care to the veterans and servicemembers.

But only with the support from more than 100 new staff and nearly 100 more on the way.

In addition to the new staff, there were nearly 800 experienced users from other military treatment facilities, contractors, and experts from the VA central office pitching in immediately after the go-live.

The pharmacy is completely reliant on outside help to operate.

The Oracle Cerner pharmacy software functions so poorly that the permanent pharmacy staff can only process about 40% of the prescriptions.

They are relying on the VA supplemental staffing unit to handle the majority of the workload.
This has all been feasible at one facility.

But no one thinks it is repeatable or sustainable.

I have serious concerns that Secretary McDonough is about to put the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the veterans it cares for, in a dangerous situation by resuming the go-lives on a large scale.

If VA is not able to, or not willing to, provide the same level of support they did for James A. Lovell at other medical centers, the result could be a disaster.

Everyone needs to think seriously about the risk.

The Oracle Cerner EHR is simply not good enough today to enable a bare minimum of efficiency in VA—let alone the high quality care our veterans deserve—without a huge influx of extra staff and money.

Even before Ms. Duke disclosed that the Veterans Health Administration is facing a $12 billion budget deficit, the financial impacts of the EHR on the organization’s staffing have never been budgeted or seriously reckoned with.

We have known for two years that VA’s cost estimate is unlikely to hold.

But despite everything that has happened, we still hear rosy predictions from VA and Oracle, and no one has acknowledged the true cost.

We have learned from Lovell and the previous facilities that the expense to purchase and install the EHR is just the beginning of the costs.

I have no doubt that moving forward with the system before it is fully functional, and before the productivity and safety problems are resolved, is the wrong decision.

It is wrong for veterans and wrong for the VA employees.

The Secretary is clearly no longer heeding my warning.

Therefore, the only responsible course of action is to lay out the true cost of finishing the Oracle rollout before VA commits to that.

Veterans and taxpayers deserve to know how large the Oracle Cerner bill truly is.

Congress as well as the public need all of the information in order to make an informed decision about whether this is worth it, and whether the inevitable sacrifices are truly justified.

Anything less is dereliction of duty.

With that, I yield to Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick for her opening statement.