Liberty IT Solutions, a Herndon, Va.-based that that supports multiple government agencies across a portfolio of health IT projects, has been awarded with a five-year contract to support data migration and data syndication efforts for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) program.
VA continues to work on replacing the department’s 40-year-old legacy EHR system, the Veterans Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), by adopting the same platform as the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), a Cerner EHR system.
According to Liberty officials, with the imminent deployment of the Cerner EHR to replace the outdated VistA platform, VA's Cerner end-users such as doctors, nurses, administrators, and others, “require a complete set of clinical, administrative, and financial data from across the VA Enterprise”—the agency’s web portal.
As such, according to officials, “Liberty's support of continuous data migration from legacy VistA domains to the shared Cerner platform will enable clinical decision support, health registries, and many other key initiatives. Additionally, many VA programs and systems (e.g. Community Care, Suicide Prevention, clinical research and quality groups, etc.) will depend on data captured through VA's Cerner implementation sites. Liberty's delivery of data syndication services will enable a complete record of data residing within VA systems in support of VA programs and objectives.”
For the work, Liberty will receive $35 million, according to officials. VA is currently operating within a $16 billion contract with Cerner to develop and deploy its new EHR. The agency is scheduled to begin transitioning to the new system, called Millennium, in March 2020, with a recent report noting that VA plans to go live with its upgraded EHR in March at five sites: the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Wash. and its four community clinics.
Liberty CEO, Bill Greene, said in a statement regarding the contract win, "Data migration and syndication is an important aspect of VA's EHRM modernization effort, and Liberty is excited to improve data migration and data syndication over the next five years as we deliver the safe and accurate transmission and maintenance of VA data."
Liberty also recently secured a secured a potential three-year, $95 million task order to modernize revenue collection and business tools for VA. As part of this work, Liberty will provide the VA Office of Community Care (OCC) Revenue Operations (RO) Consolidated Patient Account Centers (CPACs) authoritative consultation services to help improve third- and first-party collections and integration with the Cerner Millennium EHR system.
