VA Secretary to Congress: We Don't Know What the Cerner EHR Will Cost

But Senators are worried that he is underfunding the commercial electronic health record that will replace VistA.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, MD, told a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday he does not yet know the cost for the new Cerner electronic health record that the VA plans to purchase. While Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said he supports the decision to replace the VA’s existing Vista EHR, he worried the cost was not part of the 2018 budget. “I understand you don’t want to just pick a number,” Schatz told Shulkin. “But it’s not zero. And we’re about to mark this bill up and it’s difficult to do a markup when, lacking information, we’re expected to sort of book it at zero.”

Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, MD, told a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday he does not yet know the cost for the new Cerner electronic health record that the VA plans to purchase. While Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said he supports the decision to replace the VA’s existing Vista EHR, he worried the cost was not part of the 2018 budget. “I understand you don’t want to just pick a number,” Schatz told Shulkin. “But it’s not zero. And we’re about to mark this bill up and it’s difficult to do a markup when, lacking information, we’re expected to sort of book it at zero.”

“It makes me extremely nervous that you say you can absorb these costs,” Schatz said. “The EMR thing is a brand new hard cost. You’re going to have to cannibalize your budget to some extent … are you not?” Schatz was not the only lawmaker worried about whether it would be enough to handle unanticipated expenses. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, said the EHR system could run as much as $16 billion and advised against “throwing budgets up that don’t fully address the problems of our veterans in this country”...