The fraught effort by the Department of Veterans Affairs to modernize its electronic health care record system will now be governed by a modified contract that the agency pledged will boost accountability over a process that has drawn concern from lawmakers.
According to an overview of the updated agreement shared by a congressional aide Tuesday, the renegotiated arrangement has built in a series of performance metrics to ensure contractor Oracle Cerner is incentivized to log improvements in areas ranging from minimizing system crashes to enabling interoperability with the system and other platforms.
The overview, which the aide said was provided by the VA earlier on Tuesday, states the new contract contains larger fines that Oracle Cerner will have to pay if executives aren’t able to meet expectations laid out in the framework.
