The VA added nine new medical facilities in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Alaska to the deployment schedule, along with four sites in Michigan that will launch in 2026 after the program expansion has largely been on hold since April 2023, when the agency acknowledged glitches in the system had contributed to at least four veterans’ deaths and “catastrophic harm” to others.
“We are excited to bring Veterans in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Alaska a modern medical record system that will result in improvements to care, coordination and convenience,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement last week.
“The Federal [Electronic Health Record] is integrated across all VA and Department of Defense components, enabling seamless data exchange while enhancing care, safety and customer service for patients.”
The project, launched during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2017, was designed to synchronize veterans’ health records with military files for the first time. In 2018, the VA partnered with Cerner, now part of Oracle, to develop an electronic medical records system for its over 170 medical centers. This system was designed to be fully integrated with the Defense Department’s system, which was also acquired from and developed by Oracle Cerner.
Garrett Exner, a Veterans on Duty board member who spent 14 years in the Marine Corps, explained how archaic the system is currently for transitioning service members, who are essentially given paper records following their deployments.
“I was handed a folder of paper records when leaving active duty — like it’s 1998. In 2025, with the number of tech firms out there, digitizing these records shouldn’t be a hard problem to solve. Everyone agrees the system has failed — multiple times,” Exner told the Washington Examiner.
The program was initially launched at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, in 2020 and subsequently expanded to four other locations before problems halted further expansion.
Over four years, the system encountered 826 “major performance incidents,” resulting in patient harm and even fatalities. One particularly disturbing case involved a veteran struggling with suicidal thoughts, whose referral was misplaced, leaving the veteran to resort to calling a crisis hotline in a state of desperation, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
After three unsuccessful attempts since 2001, Exner said he’s eager for the VA to replace its legacy system for a fourth and final time.
“Veterans aren’t getting the care they need. This flawed rollout hurts them, and we take that personally as a veterans organization. We want — just as Congress does — for the department to assess what’s gone wrong and fix it,” he said.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he was disappointed to see the project stall under former Secretary Denis McDonough.
“I’m glad to see Secretary Collins say, ‘We got to get it going again,’ McDonough took it off as a priority, and I think that was a mistake,” Tillis told the Washington Examiner. “I’m going to do everything I can to help them get it implemented.”
The Senate confirmed Paul Lawrence as the next Veterans Affairs deputy secretary in recent weeks, putting him in charge of overseeing the electronic health records overhaul. Nominees for three top VA jobs faced lawmakers last week as well. Tillis said he still has questions about the timeline for the project’s implementation.
“I asked Secretary Collins for a stop, start, continue, and also [Richard Topping], who was the CFO [nominee] this week. I want to know exactly how they’re going to reset this project, and how we’re going to prevent what I think was a bipartisan poor execution,” Tillis added.
Earlier this month, the Spokane VA Medical Center experienced an outage of its Oracle Health EHR system for nearly six hours. That particular medical facility was the first rollout location for the program.
“I think that is of particular concern to us all,” said Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, referencing the outage at the facility and the fact that Michigan is where the next deployments of the program are slated to occur.
While some veterans advocates are encouraged to hear the department is accelerating the rollout of the program, many are concerned about the implementation, especially given past and current glitches.
“The proof is in the pudding — there have been some really heartbreaking stories because of this failed rollout, and so, yeah, I absolutely have concerns about the timeline of it all,” said a veterans advocate, speaking on condition of anonymity in an effort to reflect candidly on the situation.
“There should absolutely be some urgency to this, and it does need to get done sooner rather than later, but it needs to be done right.”
Acting VA Inspector General David Case revealed several “serious issues” the program is still experiencing during a House VA Committee hearing in late February, including handling schedule changes and missed appointments.
He said VA providers using the new Oracle-Cerner program have to conduct manual medication safety checks for patients because of concerns with the automated process.
“These manual safety checks are time-consuming and rely on the vigilance of pharmacists and front-line staff,” he said during testimony. “Given the stresses the system will likely experience during the next deployments in larger facilities, VA must be ready to handle any future instability and equip providers with the tools to continue working when the system is degraded or inoperative.”
Lawmakers want cost estimate on electronic records overhaul
Lawmakers in both chambers are demanding an update on the cost estimate of the program, as the VA moves forward with its new deployment plan.
The VA originally signed a $10 billion contract with Cerner in 2018 to implement the new system. After Oracle acquired Cerner in 2022, the contract was revised to more than $16 billion. A 2021 independent assessment by the Institute for Defense Analyses suggested costs could reach $50 billion.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the Veterans Affairs and the Appropriations subcommittee that controls VA spending sent a letter to Collins last week urging the VA to produce a new cost estimate.
“Without a reliable cost estimate, VA risks budget overruns, schedule delays, and diminished congressional trust,” the lawmakers wrote.
They referenced a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, which recommended the VA produce a new cost estimate before moving forward, emphasizing that the VA is required by law to provide cost estimates and pointing out the old estimates are obsolete.
“This request aligns with persistent calls for transparency and accountability, ensuring that Congress can fully assess [the electronic health record modernization’s] financial and operational readiness to safeguard veterans’ and taxpayers’ interests before further rollouts begin,” they said.
VA officials stated the full rollout of the new health records system across all VA facilities is now expected to be completed by 2031, four years later than initially planned. Only six of VA’s 170-plus medical sites are using the software.
The project has been a source of anger for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle after it has gone billions of dollars over budget and was paused.
“The implementation of the electronic health record is a bipartisan, multi-administration disaster,” Tillis said during a recent Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing. “There is no way on God’s green earth that we should have spent 10 billion to have only a fraction of the [sites] even touched.”
VA appears to scale back support work for new records system
In February, the VA initially announced it would cancel 875 contracts but later reduced that number to 585. According to the department, ending these contracts “will not negatively affect veteran care, benefits or services, and will help VA better focus on its core mission: providing the best possible care and services to veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors.”
This comes amid a major reorganization that includes scrapping more than 80,000 jobs from the agency as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cuts.
Aptiv Resources, Trilogy Federal, Titan Alpha, and others supporting the digital records overhaul saw VA contracts canceled but then had them reinstated. However, some say the scale and scope of the work have changed, and many of the companies were forced to lay off a number of their contractors working on the program.
“They canceled our original contract, modified the scope, so they have not brought everybody back on. It’s all in flux,” said a contractor working on the project, speaking to the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity. “It’s not just our company, we are hearing others are impacted as well.”
“There’s this huge gap in communications — it’s like on a Monday, they say we are going to fast-pace the rollout of the EHRM and then on Tuesday, they say we are cutting the contract support for it — and then days later, they say, oh, nevermind, actually you’re reinstated,” the person added.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the ranking member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, called the situation a “self-inflicted mess.”
“It would be laughable if it wasn’t so costly and serious. The records system is in need of repair, and it’s been a nightmare, but almost impossible to believe, Musk made it worse,” Blumenthal told the Washington Examiner.
“The cancellation of contracts in this unthinking and untargeted way has made a mess of the electronic records, but also of any other systems.”
According to Peter Kasperowicz, the VA press secretary, none of the contracts for the companies referenced are currently canceled, but he did not clarify how any of them have been modified or changed.
Veterans advocates welcome changes to the implementation of the system, especially after a “disastrous” rollout. However, they also admit the way DOGE went about the cancellation of contracts is concerning.
“DOGE should not come in and just take a blow torch to everything and then claim efficiencies, right? That’s an imperfect way to improve this stuff,” the person said, granted permission to speak on the condition of anonymity. “The starting and stopping is not good for any program in the government, as you know, like sort of bringing people on, cutting them loose, bringing them back on.”
VA LAYOFFS SPARK CONCERNS ABOUT VETERANS’ CARE: ‘THIS COULD BE LIFE OR DEATH’
There is also some unease about the reductions in staff numbers at the VA as the department is accelerating the rollout of the new digital records system. The deployment of the Oracle Cerner system at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, Illinois, required the support of nearly 200 new staff members and 800 temporary workers, according to members a key House panel last year.
“Secretary Collins came to my state, to Howell, Michigan, and was asked directly about the potential cut of [70,000] to 80,000 people, and gave no assurances that that was wrong or misguided or problematic,” Slotkin said. “It’s completely chaotic. And you know, they committed to protecting veterans care and you can’t protect veterans care if you create chaos around veteran service.”
