The Department of Veterans Affairs deployed its Federal Electronic Health Record modernization system to the Northern Indiana Health Care System on Aug. 24. The rollout covers hospitals in Fort Wayne, Marion, and the Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis, along with 16 associated clinics.
The deployment extends the troubled but critical modernization program that aims to replace the VA’s legacy VistA system and improve care coordination between VA and Defense Department health care providers, the VA said.
The Federal EHR modernization program has faced significant delays and cost overruns since its inception. Congressional oversight committees and the Government Accountability Office have raised repeated concerns about system performance, user satisfaction, and implementation timelines.
For the veterans served by the three Indiana hospitals and 16 clinics, the new system is designed to create a single, interoperable health record that follows them across VA facilities and between VA and military treatment facilities. Under the legacy system, records were often fragmented and difficult to share.
Each successful deployment is a notable milestone in a program that has experienced setbacks at earlier sites. Previous deployments at facilities in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest revealed software problems, workflow disruptions, and clinician frustration that required extensive remediation.
The VA serves more than 9 million enrolled veterans through more than 1,200 health care facilities nationwide. The EHR modernization is intended to eventually cover all of them, creating a unified digital health record system for the nation’s veteran population.
Indiana is home to approximately 380,000 veterans, according to VA data. The Northern Indiana Health Care System serves veterans across a multi-county region in the northern and central parts of the state.