WASHINGTON — A quarter-million U.S. military veterans may be at risk of being prescribed the wrong medicine.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) told lawmakers last week that a glitch in electronic records-keeping could result in medication mix-ups. This means vets could end up receiving prescription drugs that they are allergic to or that would interact poorly with their existing meds.
The problem is due to software interoperability issues between medical facilities using the VA’s new multi-billion-dollar Oracle electronic health record (EHR) system and the department’s legacy system — VistA — which is still used at all but five of the department’s 171 medical centers.
Members of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Technology complained that despite repeated promises from officials involved with the upgrade, little progress has been made in the last year.
“VA seems to have been concealing the errors that are still ongoing,” said Rep Matt Rosendale (R-Montana), the panel’s chairman. “This is a breach of trust. And it is absolutely unacceptable.”
The VA OIG found significant lingering problems with how pharmacy records are shared between medical sites, with investigators finding evidence that mail-order pharmacy data for nearly 120,000 patients is outdated or could contain mistakes.
“Thus, patients seen at both new and legacy EHR sites may be prescribed contra-indicated medications. And legacy EHR providers may be making clinical decisions based on inaccurate data,” said VA Deputy Inspector General David Case.
Since April 2023, the VA OIG provided the department with more than 70 recommendations for corrective action.
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