VA plans to deploy new EHR at 13 medical facilities in 2026

The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to increase deployments of its new Oracle Cerner electronic health record system to 13 VA medical facilities in 2026, with the ultimate goal of completing the troubled modernization project as early as 2031.

VA said in December that it would be rolling out the new EHR software at a total of four medical sites in mid-2026. In a Thursday release outlining its new plans, however, VA said it would announce the nine additional medical facilities slated to receive the modernized EHR system later this year, after consulting with VA officials, clinicians and Oracle Cerner representatives. 

The department said it is “pursuing a market-based approach to site selection for its deployments going forward,” which will enable it “to scale up the number of concurrent deployments, while also enabling staff to work as efficiently as possible.”

The announcement comes as VA moves out of an operational pause on most rollouts of the new software that was instituted in April 2023 following a series of technical glitches, patient safety concerns and training challenges. 

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 being seen, in part, as a crucial test of the efforts to right the modernization project. 

During his January confirmation hearing, current VA Secretary Doug Collins echoed bipartisan concerns about the EHR modernization project but told lawmakers that the effort — which is intended to help streamline the delivery of medical records for servicemembers transitioning from active duty to civilian life — was necessary and that “there's no reason in the world we cannot get this done.” 

At the time, Collins also told lawmakers that he believed the department could restart deployments faster than the mid-2026 timeframe that the then-Biden administration set for resuming EHR system rollouts. 

“America’s Veterans deserve a medical records system that’s integrated across all VA and DOD components, and that is exactly what we will deliver,” Collins said in a Thursday statement. “We can and will move faster on this important priority. But we’re going to listen to our doctors, nurses and vendor partners along the way in order to ensure patient safety, quality and customer service.”

Although VA said its goal is to complete all deployments of the new EHR system as soon as 2031, that timeframe already exceeds the limits of the current contract it has with Oracle Cerner. 

The department initially entered into a 10-year, $10 billion contract with Cerner in May 2018 to modernize its legacy health record system. The cost of that contract was later revised to over $16 billion, and Cerner was subsequently acquired by Oracle in 2022.

VA and Oracle Cerner subsequently renegotiated their existing contract in May 2023 to include more accountability provisions in the agreement, as well as to revise the remaining contract from an additional 5-year term to five 1-year terms.

In addition to pressing VA to develop a master schedule for future EHR system deployments, lawmakers have pushed for the department to figure out the total cost of its modernization project. 

During a House hearing last month, Republicans and Democrats both called for the VA official overseeing the EHR system’s rollout to develop an updated lifecycle cost estimate. Estimates for the project’s full completion have ranged from $16.1 billion to almost $50 billion.