VHA Renews EHR System Contract at 43 VA Medical Centers

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has awarded a five-year contract renewal with health IT vendor Clinicomp to continue providing an EHR system for 43 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMC) nationwide.

The EHR system supports in-patient settings, including emergency, procedural care, critical care, and medical surgical areas.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health IT vendor facilitated an EHR implementation of a COVID-19 clinical surveillance monitoring solution for VA hospitals, officials said in a press release.

This integration allowed providers to monitor at-risk and rising-risk patients for improved critical care coordination. The solution also helped healthcare organizations in managing valuable resources during the pandemic, such as ventilators, officials noted.

The current VHA contract renewal follows the April 2020 announcement of the EHR vendor’s Defense Health Agency support contract award. The EHR vendor is contracted to serve the Department of Defense's 64 Military Treatment Facilities (MTF) in the US and abroad for the next seven years.

The Department of Veterans Affairs also recently awarded five new contracts with Medicom that are set to boost interoperability for health data exchange.

The contract awards will allow Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 21, VISN 2, VISN 9, the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center in VISN 10, and the VA Illiana Health Care System in VISN 12 to join the 15 existing VA participants in Medicom's Health Information Network.

These new additions to the network will enhance health information exchange for 2.9 million veterans seeking care from 38 VA Medical Centers across 21 states and jurisdictions. The network supports the exchange of health records as well as medical imaging.

Currently, medical images and diagnostic results are often brought to and from the VA on CDs and DVDs. This often results in delays in diagnoses and care delivery, not to mention costs to the VA estimated at $163-181 million per year.

The health IT vendor said its network enables indexing, search, and retrieval of data. This means that through the platform, providers such as the VA may retrieve requested images and documents from community providers electronically, eliminating the need for CDs and DVDs.