How One County Botched Its Cerner EHR Rollout

Bernie Monegain | Healthcare IT News | June 5, 2014

Grand Jury concludes investigation into what happened with Ventura County Cerner] EHR

It seems everything that could go wrong with an EHR rollout did at the Ventura County Health Care Agency, a county-run healthcare system in Thousand Oaks. Calif. A grand jury investigation found the county neglected to plan, hire and adequately train for the transition.

Moreover, according to the report, dated May 29, 2014, VCHCA failed to procure laptops and servers in a timely way, significantly underestimating the total number of simultaneous users the EHR system had to accommodate, and it lacked a dedicated and experienced project manager to oversee, track and report all tasks.

VCHCA tapped Kansas City, Mo.- based Cerner for its EHR. The grand jury found that beginning with the Cerner contract in October 2011, the county lacked a project manager. The lack of a project manager "contributed to staff being inadequately prepared for using the new system and to a problematic EHR system implementation by VCHCA," the grand jury concluded...