VA names 9 medical facilities that will receive new EHR in 2026

The Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday officially announced the nine additional VA medical facilities slated to receive the new Oracle Health electronic health record system next year as part of its accelerated deployment schedule.

The naming of the specific VA medical centers comes after department officials said earlier this month that they planned to deploy the modernized EHR software at a total of 13 facilities in 2026. Under the Biden administration, VA announced in December that it was looking to deploy the new system at a total of four Michigan-based medical sites in mid-2026.

The nine additional sites are:

• Cincinnati VA Medical Center-Fort Thomas in Kentucky
• Chillicothe VA Medical Center in Ohio
• Cincinnati VA Medical Center in Ohio
• Dayton VA Medical Center in Ohio
• Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center in Ohio 
• Fort Wayne VA Medical Center in Indiana
• Marion VA Medical Center in Indiana 
• Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indiana 
• Alaska VA Healthcare System in Alaska

VA said in a Monday release that the nine sites “were chosen following planning sessions among officials from VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office, regional and local VA medical leaders, VA clinicians and EHR vendor Oracle Health.”

The planned rollout of the modernized system at a total of 13 VA medical sites next year comes as the department moves out of an operational pause on most software deployments that was instituted in April 2023. The reset period was put into effect after the EHR modernization project was beset by a series of patient safety concerns, technical issues and usability challenges at the sites where the system had been implemented 

Since 2020, VA has deployed the software at just six of its 170 medical centers. One of those rollouts occurred at a joint VA-Defense Department medical facility in North Chicago last March during the agency’s reset period, with that deployment viewed as a critical test of the efforts to put the modernization project back on track. The new system is meant to be interoperable with the DOD’s modernized EHR system that is also from Oracle.

VA’s release said it is “pursuing a market-based approach to site selection” moving forward and that it plans to adopt “a standard baseline of products, workflows and integrations aligned with subject-matter-expert recommendations” to help guide future deployments. The department added that it is looking to fully deploy the EHR system as soon as 2031.

The expedited rollout schedule for the new software aligns with VA Secretary Doug Collins’ stated goal of speeding up deployments, while also working to better overcome roadblocks moving forward. 

During his January confirmation hearing, Collins echoed concerns about the EHR system’s rollout but said the project was needed to streamline the delivery of medical records for servicemembers transitioning from active duty and that “there's no reason in the world we cannot get this done.”

As deployments look to resume next year, Congress and government watchdogs have also drawn renewed attention to the cost of the overall EHR modernization initiative and VA’s inability thus far to pin down an accurate topline figure.

The department initially signed a $10 billion contract — which was later revised to over $16 billion — with Cerner in May 2018 to modernize its legacy health record system and make it interoperable with the DOD’s new health record, which was also provided by Cerner. Oracle later acquired Cerner in 2022 and rebranded the combined unit as Oracle Health.

During a February House hearing, however, one witness said estimates to complete the program have ranged from $16.1 billion to an independent analysis that pegged the project’s total cost at almost $50 billion.