There’s news for those charting the ongoing VistA drama at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Cerner might be the best replacement for the decades-old EHR system, according to a new Black Book report.
VistA was developed internally by the VA more than 30 years ago. In recent years, critics have agonized over the system’s lack of interoperability and how outdated it is. Still, Black Book Research Managing Partner Doug Brown claims the system was acclaimed in its day. “VistA was a true pioneer in the birth of EHRs more than 30 years ago,” he said in a statement. “In fact, much of the architecture of today’s commercial EHRs was based upon VistA’s open-source technology, which is used around the world.”
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For the report, Black Book analyzed the results of its first quarter surveys, which included responses from 30,000 EHR users. From the responses, Black Book looked at 24 key performance indicators of five major EHR vendors: Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, Epic and Meditech.
Black Book also determined how the vendors performed in four of President Trump’s VA-related health initiatives: improving veterans’ health access, solving the opiate crisis, innovating government agencies and improving government business process and fiscal performance.
The results? Cerner topped the list. Not only did it have a mean score of 9.14 out of 10 among the 24 KPIs and four initiatives, but it also ranked first in each of the individual initiatives.
Allscripts nabbed the second place trophy, with an average score of 8.91. The vendor also came in second in each of the individual initiatives.
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Epic came in next, with a mean score of 8.17, followed by athenahealth with 7.89 and Meditech with 7.66.
One of Meditech’s weakest areas was related to the third initiative of innovating government agencies. The vendor scored a 5.79 in patient portal and experience.
Black Book noted that the lowest performance area for some of the vendors was the last initiative (improving government business process and fiscal performance). Epic’s weakest category was cost control through implementations and go-lives, and improving the client’s fiscal performance. The Verona, Wisconsin-based vendor only received a 5.77 in this area. athenahealth, on the other hand, experienced difficulty in the vendor reputation, trust and viability category, in which it received a 6.25 score.
Black Book’s analysis comes after VA Secretary David Shulkin said the department will make a decision on whether it will replace VistA by July 1, 2017.
A few recent events prove the VA is taking steps toward reaching a decision. Last week, the department issued two requests for information. The first RFI asked vendors for advice on modernizing VistA or piecing together multiple platforms to create a new system. The second RFI asked vendors for insight on commercial Software-as-a-Service models, indicating the VA might be opting for a cloud-based platform.
Photo: YinYang, Getty Images
