Dive Brief:
- The Department of Veterans Affairs will roll out the Oracle electronic health record at nine more medical facilities next year, with the goal of completing the turbulent EHR deployment as early as 2031, the agency said Thursday.
- The update brings the total number of deployments planned for next year to 13. In December, the VA said it was taking steps to resume the project after a long pause, starting with four facilities in Michigan in 2026.
- The nine facilities will be announced later this year, following planning sessions with VA officials, clinicians and Oracle, the agency said in a press release.
Dive Insight:
The VA will select the next sites in the deployment schedule based on market, allowing staff to work more efficiently and increasing the number of rollouts that can be conducted at the same time, the agency said.
It also plans to adopt a standard base of products, workflows and integrations, which will accelerate deployments and simplify decision-making.
“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,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement.
The troubled EHR rollout has been a slow and challenging process for the agency. EHR vendor Cerner — later acquired by technology giant Oracle — first received the contract to replace the VA’s aging medical record system in 2018.
But seven years later, only six medical centers have gone live with the new EHR. Meanwhile, the project has been plagued with patient safety risks and technical problems that frustrate providers.
Another challenge for the project is its unclear price tag. Cost projections range from the VA’s 2019 estimate of about $16 billion to an independent evaluation of nearly $50 billion, Carol Harris, director for information technology and cybersecurity at the Government Accountability Office, told lawmakers at an oversight hearing last month.
Still, neither estimate reflects the many changes to the rollout, including the pause in deployments, in recent years, she said.
The VA largely paused deployments of the EHR in April 2023, as part of an effort to improve system performance and get the project back on track.
Representatives from the VA and Oracle have told lawmakers the system improved during the pause. Still, the EHR experienced an outage last week, disrupting access VA care sites for hours.
Soon, Oracle and the VA will restart deployments. In December, the VA said it was beginning early-stage work to roll out the record to four Michigan facilities — VA Battle Creek Medical Center, VA Detroit Healthcare System, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and VA Saginaw Healthcare System — in mid-2026.
Collins, who was sworn in as head of the agency last month, promised to prioritize the rollout during a confirmation hearing.
The VA is facing other potential disruption under the Trump administration. The agency is planning a reorganization that would cut about 80,000 jobs, returning the VA to 2019 staffing levels.
