Spokane, Washington, was supposed to be the center of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ tech reinvention, the first site in the agency’s decadelong project to change its medical records software. But one morning in early March, the latest system malfunction made some clinicians snap.
At Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center, the records system — developed by Cerner Corp., based in North Kansas City, Missouri — went down. Staffers, inside the hospital and its outpatient facilities, were back to relying on pen and paper. Computerized schedules were inaccessible. Physicians couldn’t enter new orders or change patients’ medications.
By the next day, the electronic health records were only partially available. Dozens of records remained “sequestered,” meaning that doctors and nurses struggled to update patient charts.
