US VA wasted $2.1bn on failed EHR projects

The US Department of Veterans Affairs wasted around US$1.7 billion ($2.1 billion) on three failed attempts to modernise its electronic health records system, a recent audit has found.

The audit by the Government Accountability Office found that $1.1 billion was spent on two aborted projects from 2011 to 2016 aimed at overhauling a system used to provide care for 9 million war veterans.

According to NextGov, a further $600 million was spent on a third program which commenced in 2001 but was deemed failed and cancelled in 2010.

Nearly half of this budget was awarded to HP for hardware, software and other IT systems, analysis indicates.

The department is now involved in a fourth attempt to modernise its health record systems, having awarded a $10 billion contract to Cerner Corp. The audit finds that it will be essential for the department to learn its lessons from the previous aborted contracts.

“The department’s dedication to completing and effectively executing the planning activities that it has identified will be essential to helping minimize program risks and expeditiously guide this latest electronic health record modernization initiative to a successful outcome—which VA, for almost two decades, has been unable to achieve,” it states.

The GAO has separately found that the US Coast Guard is still spending millions for a cancelled electronic health records project that is already US$46 million over budget.

The Integrated Health Information System originally had a budget of $14 million, but this blew out to around $60 million before it was cancelled in 2015. Despite the spending, none of the software or equipment for the project was usable, and the Coast Guard had to revert to a primarily paper-based system.

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