Most Recent VA Oracle Cerner EHR Outage Strikes Pharmacy Services
The over eight-hour VA Oracle Cerner EHR Outage prevented patients from accessing pharmacy services such as filling prescription orders.
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) latest Oracle Cerner EHR outage has hit pharmacy services, according to reporting from FedScoop.
On Thursday, October 6, the EHR outage was detected around 8:35 a.m., leaving veterans and active-duty service members without access to pharmacy services until the issue was resolved at 6:19 p.m.
During the downtime, functions provided through the Medication Manager Retail (MMR), Oracle Cerner’s retail pharmacy module, could not be used. One such function rendered unusable was prescription refills.
A team of Oracle Cerner engineers detected that an application package coding error caused the issue.
This most recent incident adds to a long line of EHR outages to impact VA patients.
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed that the VA has experienced nearly 500 major incidents and at least 45 days of downtime since the system go-live in 2020.
Specifically, the EHR system had 930 hours of “incomplete functionality” and 40 hours of “outage” between Sept. 8, 2020, and June 10, 2022.
The frequency of outages has raised some concern for officials.
“The bottom line is that my confidence in the EHR is badly shaken,” Denis McDonough, VA secretary, said in a statement provided to FedScoop. “Regardless of whether an outage in the system lasts for one minute or one hour or one day, any outage or delay is unacceptable for the Veterans we serve and our VA healthcare providers who serve them.”
Due to its many issues, the VA has decided to pause the trouble-stricken EHR system from any future deployments until 2023.
In a statement, McDonough assured the public that the VA would not continue with any Oracle Cerner EHR rollouts until all patient safety risks are fixed.
“I think we’ve been clear that we have to be confident that these risks to patient safety are addressed before we go live,” McDonough said, according to FedScoop. “So we’re not just focused on the passage of time between now and next year, we’re focused on improving the system.”
“We won’t go to roll out the EHR in any of the other hospitals until we have a go-live checklist addressed and until we have our patient safety concerns [addressed], and then we’ll be in a position to make a decision on the rollout,” McDonough continued.