With new policies and procedures in place, the departments of Veterans Affairs and Technology are moving forward with plans to bring electronic medical records to California’s eight veteran homes, hoping to put behind them the massive failure of the previous $28 million project that state auditors found wasted time and taxpayer dollars.
“What happened in this project is not acceptable, and we are taking proactive steps, including early compliance with all recommendations made by the state auditor, to make sure it does not happen again,” Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Vito Imbasciani told lawmakers Wednesday.
A June report by State Auditor Elaine Howle found CalVet had spent nearly $28 million on a system that wasted staff time, failed to reduce reliance on paper records and limited the department’s ability to provide “more consistent, efficient care for veterans.” And with little oversight, project managers at CalVet failed to promptly identify a host of problems that ultimately led to the termination of the project seven years after it began.
Initiated in 2007, the Enterprise-Wide Veterans Home Information System was designed to transition the state’s veteran homes from paper-based records to an integrated departmentwide electronic medical records system — providing continuity of care for roughly 2,200 veterans.
Out of the six vendors that bid for the contract, just one met all the requirements, according to Matt Bender, manager of the Legislative Affairs Unit at the Department of General Services, which procured the original contract. However, little documentation exists to show how the other bids compared. The contract was awarded to Solutions West Consulting LLC (later Brekken Technology Inc.), according to the audit.
CalVet suspended the project in 2013 after discovering deficiencies in project oversight, project management, contract management, contract deliverables, and the viability of the system contractor, according to the audit report. The project was officially terminated in December 2014.
Among the key issues was the arrangement where CalVet used one contractor to perform both the independent oversight of the project and the verification of the services.
“The project oversight role by the Department of Technology was limited to reading a status report,” Technology Department Director Amy Tong testified before the Assembly Veterans Affairs Committee. “Today, we have embedded oversight, who is actually sitting in the department working with project staff side by side so that risk can be observed rather than from reading from a report.”
Imbasciani said CalVet has implemented seven of the 11 recommendations proposed by the state auditor, with the remaining four expected to be implemented by September 15. For example, all IT projects are reported to the agency’s chief information officer and any project more than $1 million must go through the Department of Technology. And no one vendor can provide both project oversight and verification.
The Department of Technology is also currently working to implement the auditor’s three recommendations for its department, Tong said.
Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, praised Tong and Imbasciani, both of whom assumed their jobs after the project failed, for their leadership and willingness to embrace new processes.
“We here in the Legislature, it’s great when we pass bills, but I think one of our real responsibilities is oversight,” said Irwin, who is chair of the Veterans Committee. “And unfortunately, over the years we’ve heard a lot of stories about failed software projects. And so, we really want to see those type of things turned around.”
CalVet is currently searching for a replacement system and working with the Department of Technology through its new Stage-Gate process, which is intended to prevent the problems that plagued its previous project.
Although the first project failed to deliver an electronic medical records system, lawmakers heard that the department had gained valuable insight, training and organizational structure changes. It also owns the hardwire, wiring, licenses and source codes that could be used in a new system, as well as new pharmacy software, nutrition software for meal planning, electronic record storage, billing software and inventory control.
“We’re going to use as much as we can salvage from the old system,” Imbasciani said. “So I don’t think we’re going to start from scratch.”
