WASHINGTON, DC — VA has announced that it is planning to restart the rollout of its electronic healthcare record modernization project in mid-2026, starting with four facilities in Michigan—Ann Arbor, Detroit, Battle Creek and Saginaw. This comes after a pause in the rollout that has currently lasted 21 months and could stretch to 3 years if VA’s announced plans happen on schedule.
VA officials said they believe that they and Oracle, the developer of the system, have made enough improvements in the technology and in the roll-out process that the next stages will not experience the same level of difficulties as earlier stages did. Meanwhile, both Democratic and Republican legislators have seriously discussed whether the department shouldn’t search for a new EHR entirely or go back to its legacy VistA system.
The installation of the new EHR began at the Mann-Grandstaff VAMC in Spokane, WA, in October 2020 and ran into problems almost immediately. Elements of the system would not function; scheduled appointments were lost; and orders failed to be processed. Staff were forced to develop time-consuming workarounds to complete tasks that had taken seconds in VistA. The system was also prone to outages, leaving staff unable to access crucial elements of the EHR.
The same problems would occur to a lesser extent at subsequent installations at Walla-Walla, Columbus and Roseburg and White City in Oregon. It would later be determined that many of these difficulties might have been avoided if Cerner, which was purchased by Oracle in 2022, had worked more closely with VA staff during the development process, and if they had better prepared facilities prior to installation.
Facing intense criticism from Congress, in April 2023 VA announced that it was pausing the rollout. It described the pause as a reset, saying the department would use the opportunity to not only fix the bugs in the system at the five facilities where it’s already installed but reconfigure the installation process itself.
In March 2024, VA temporarily lifted that pause, installing the system at the James A. Lovell Federal Healthcare Center in Chicago, the only medical facility jointly operated by Va and DoD. According to VA, the installation went much more smoothly than at previous facilities, although legislators have pointed out that this success at Lovell came at the expense of a hundred extra staff members and hundreds more on-call.
Regardless, VA sees Lovell as proof that the lessons learned during the reset can be implemented at future installations.
“We paused the deployments of the EHR … to listen to veterans and clinicians, understand the issues and make improvements to the system,” said VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher upon announcement of the new schedule. “As a result of those efforts, veteran trust and system performance have improved across the board.”
According to VA, between September 2023 and December 2024, the system was functioning 100% of the time for 10 out of 16 months, and 99.8% of the time the remaining months. The average user now experiences near zero interruptions per day. During the first year of operation, Spokane experienced 48 outages, half of them full system failures.
Outpatient trust scores have also risen at all EHR sites since the reset period began, VA announced, reaching 92% in Spokane and 93% at Columbus. According to the department, clinician and staff satisfaction has also increased during the reset.
The plans for the 2026 restart could change with the incoming administration. However, at a press conference following the announcement, then-VA Secretary Denis McDonough said that his successor should not lose sight of the reason the VA needs a new EHR in the first place.
“My wish for our providers and for the VA system is that we not lose sight of the why,” McDonough said. “And why is that veterans need an integrated, modernized electronic health record for better health outcomes and for better and overall engagement with the VA. And by better, I mean more accurate claims determinations, ultimately, will be informed by this when it’s fully implemented.
“So sometimes I worry that we have lost the why or that we have [prioritized provider satisfaction] rather than veteran outcome. I think our experience at VA is when we do that, that is to say when we make a series of decisions not based on best veteran interest in a veteran-centered way, we lose our way.”
