Eastern Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers released a statement saying, “The shutdown of Mann-Grandstaff VA yesterday is another event in a series of challenges that the new electronic health record has created for staff and veterans at the facility. My understanding is that an update made to help the VA’s database for demographic data better communicate with the Cerner system was not performed correctly. Mann-Grandstaff leadership rightly took the system offline until the scope of the problem was understood, so no patients were harmed.”
However, Sen. Murphy called the technical failure “absolutely unacceptable.” In a more recent statement about the rollout, she said, “This is about patient safety and it needs to get fixed—period. VA needs to be upfront about issues like this in real time—Congress absolutely requires transparency when it comes to failures as serious as this. I should be hearing about this from local reporting first.”
If the high-quality care veterans deserve is uncertain at any point, she added, “the rollout should be delayed.” Again.