Four years after the Department of Veterans Affairs awarded a half-billion-dollar IT contract — so big that one executive predicted it would jumpstart an entire industry — Austin-based VA officials warned that the fledgling effort to digitally track medical equipment was in danger of “catastrophic failure.”

Internal documents obtained by the American-Statesman show that last year, even as government overseers were taking the VA to task for failures in other high-profile IT projects, VA officials worried that the department’s $543 million contract with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services to implement a real-time locating system, or RTLS, was careening off the rails.

St. David’s Medical Center uses electronic tracking devices to monitor mobile medical equipment throughout the hospital. RALPH BARRERA/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Ralph Barrera/American-Statesman Staff

The system, which consists of tagging and wirelessly tracking everything from catheters to hospital beds, has been hailed as a way to potentially save millions of dollars in lost or misplaced equipment.

The VA has also vowed the project would prevent death and disease from unsterilized equipment, a persistent problem at the VA. The contract was awarded in 2012, soon after colonoscopies with dirty equipment led to a rash of hepatitis and HIV infection at veterans hospitals in Florida and Georgia.

But the contract has been beset by a host of problems, including failed operational tests, questions over the reliability of equipment tags and fundamental concerns over whether the department’s WiFi can support the system, according to thousands of pages of emails, reports and documents obtained by the American-Statesman using the Freedom of Information Act.

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