CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland VA is rolling out a new digital record-keeping system, which some tout as a long-overdue upgrade and others criticize as a threat to patient care.
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U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence spoke to News 5 during his visit to Cleveland, celebrating the kickoff of the Federal Electronic Health Record (EHR) system.
"The VA has a history of innovation. We invented the nicotine patch, we were there for the pacemaker, exoskeleton. We are leaders in American medicine," Lawrence said.
He explained the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center is one of more than a dozen locations to debut the technology.
“This will really make the way we provide care for our veterans better,” he said.
The Oracle-created program is intended to store and streamline patient records and use AI assistance to take notes, organize charts and support care plans.
The most recent effort to replace the VA’s current 30-year-old system began in 2018 with several medical centers implementing the new EHR system. The rollout was paused in April 2023, after some medical professionals and administrators raised concerns over the system’s reliability and patient safety.
Lawrence said the VA and Oracle have made more than 13,000 software improvements since the initial rollout. He said years of training and testing have brought the VA to this point.
“It is safe, and we are going very slow to make sure that we have control over the AI and it is doing manual tasks that free up our providers to provide care,” he said. “We’ve done our very best to make sure [there are] no unintended consequences, nothing but the very best care for our veterans.”
Not everyone has been celebrating the rollout.
"We're not against modern technology. Don't get this whole thing wrong. We're against technology that doesn't work for the people whose lives depend on it," former VA social worker and U.S. Air Force veteran Steve Friday said during a demonstration.
Other veterans, advocates and former and current VA staff joined a protest near the VA Medical Center Friday. Some raised concerns over the multi-billion-dollar investment in Oracle, a private company they believe lacks the institutional knowledge to create adequate technology for the medical field.
Others believe the technology itself has systematic flaws that are putting patient care in jeopardy.
"We do know there's been many patients that have called and said, 'Where's my appointment? The VA failed me again. I'm never coming back,'" said Aleen Martinez.
Martinez works as a nurse referral coordinator at the VA Ann Arbor Hospital, which debuted the EHR technology in April.
She said the system has led to missing patient information, gaps in medication orders and a backlog of more than 20,000 patient referrals. She believes it's leading to delays in time-sensitive patient care.
"I'm so sorry that your case got left behind and now you're stuck in this bottleneck," Martinez said.
Lawrence had strong words when News 5 asked about the concerns.
"They are very present-level luddites, unaware of what the technology can provide to our veterans and are foolish to think that our previous system, which is antiquated and incapable of doing what we imagine the future's going to have, could possibly replace that," Lawrence said of the critics.
He said in-person support will be at the Cleveland VA for two weeks, with remote help available after that.
The protest group planned to deliver a letter to the medical center on Friday, asking the director to halt the rollout.
