Sarah Sheffield, a nurse practitioner at a Veterans Affairs clinic in Eugene, Oregon , had a problem. Her patients — mostly in their 70s and beyond — couldn’t read computer screens. It’s not an unusual problem for older people, which is why you might think Oracle Cerner , the developers of the agency’s new digital health record system, would have anticipated it.
But they didn’t.
Federal law requires government resources to be accessible to patients with disabilities. But patients can’t easily enlarge the text. “They all learned to get strong reading glasses and magnifying glasses,” said Sheffield, who retired in early October.
The difficulties are everyday reminders of a dire reality for patients in the VA system. More than a million patients are blind or have low vision. They rely on software to access prescriptions or send messages to their doctors. But often the technology fails them. Either the screens don’t allow users to zoom in on the text, or screen-reader software that translates text to speech isn’t compatible.
“None of the systems are accessible” to these patients, said Donald Overton , executive director of the Blinded Veterans Association .
Patients often struggle even to log into websites or enter basic information needed to check in for hospital visits, Overton said: “We find our community stops trying, checks out, and disengages. They become dependent on other individuals; they give up independence.”
Now, the developing VA medical record system, already bloated by outsize costs, has been delayed until June 2023. So far, the project has threatened to exacerbate those issues.
While users in general have been affected by numerous incidents of downtime, delayed care, and missing information, barriers to access are particularly acute for blind and low-vision users — whether patients or workers within the health system. At least one Oregon-based employee has been offered aid — a helper assigned to read and click buttons — to navigate the system.
Over 1,000 Section 508 complaints are in a backlog to be assessed, or assigned to Oracle Cerner to fix, Veterans Affairs spokesperson Terrence Hayes confirmed . That section is part of federal law guaranteeing people with disabilities access to government technology.
Hayes said the problems described by these complaints don’t prevent employees and patients with disabilities from using the system. The complaints — 469 of which have been assigned to Oracle Cerner to fix, he said — mean that users’ disabilities make it more difficult, to the point of requiring mitigation.
The project is under new management with big promises. North Kansas City, Missouri-based developer Cerner, which originally landed the VA contract, was recently taken over by database technology giant Oracle, which plans to overhaul the software, company executive Mike Sicilia said during a September Senate hearing. “We intend to rewrite” the system, he said. “We have found nothing that can’t be addressed in relatively short order.”
But that will happen under continued scrutiny. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said his panel would continue to oversee the department’s compliance with accessibility standards. “Whether they work for VA or receive health care and benefits, the needs of veterans must be addressed by companies that want to work with the VA,” he said.