The VA’s tech mess began in Kansas City

[K.S. Bhaskar]

https://amp.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article315506519.html

Regards

- Bhaskar

[Joseph Dalmolin]

Thanks for sharing this!!!!

On Apr 24, 2026, at 17:43, K.S. Bhaskar <ksbh...@gmail.com> wrote:



https://amp.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article315506519.html

Regards

- Bhaskar

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[Scott Grabins]

Thanks for sharing.  While there is a lot of good information here, it's not entirely accurate.  When Cerner won the VA contract, EPIC was in the mix too.  Not sure where that becomes 'no-bid' when more than one company was competing for the contract.

VistA does run on a very similar underlying architecture as Epic but, overall, is in need of updating.  I am a firm believer in MUMPS/M/Cache as an underlying technology for the database regardless of the implementation on top.

[K.S. Bhaskar]

The shootout for the DoD contract was between Epic and Cerner. The VA was a non-competitive award to Cerner.

Regards

- Bhaskar

[Joseph Dal Molin]

A point of contrast...when we were wrapping up the VistA Office EHR initiative, WorldVistA was not allowed to directly give the VA the open source code that was produced...I was literally told it could be considered "bribery" even though we were under contract to CMS and there was an inter-agency agreement with VA. So we just published it on our code repository.

Joseph

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[Scott Grabins]

Yes, that is correct that it was the DoD contract that was directly competed for but everyone in the bidding understood that the goal was to consolidate the VA and DoD EMR systems so that care was seamless.  The winner of the DoD contract was also going to work with the VA.  

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[Michael O'Neill]

When was this, Joseph? There was a period where VA encouraged open source code and, specifically, open source code for VistA. In setting up OSEHRA, there were definitely conversations with people who didn’t understand how this can work, but it seemed that there was pretty broad support for open source software, including among leadership. Maybe that period didn’t last very long, though.

Mike

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[Lisa Borrusso]

Hi everyone! I’m new here, but have been combing your archives for a while now. I was told way back when that Epic lost to Cerner on the DOD bid, which was competitive. Then Kushner* lobbied to make the subsequent VA purchase no-bid as a supposed no brainer because it was gonna be so easy to integrate with the “new” DOD system.

*I didn’t understand the Kushner significance at the time. I was just told “someone” had pushed for the VA to go no-bid and it led to a lawsuit afterwards.

I still hold out hope that someone will eventually stop throwing good money after bad: call the DOD system integration a success since each branch is finally on a single system, revert the few VA sites fully back to VistA and CPRS, and invest in modernizing those. Oracle is looking to sell of its health division at this point to focus more on AI, so maybe? Every one who got filthy rich off the deal has already retired with a golden parachute, right?

Lisa

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." ~Gandhi

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[Joseph Dal Molin]

Jan 2007. 

The VOE initiative started in Spring 2005...there were a couple of articles about it in the NY Times (Gina Kolata; op-ed by Thomas Goetz, of Wired Magazine)...that publicity was both a blessing and a curse. The VOE contract and inter-agency agreement with VA and IHS provided a great context for raising awareness of the open source model....ironically, something VA pioneered long before the open source "label" became a thing. 

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