The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to restart deployment of a new electronic health records system in 2026, roughly four years after its adoption was paused amid concerns for patient safety and practicality.
The VA announced Dec. 20 that four VA medical centers in Michigan — in Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit and Saginaw — will receive the new Federal Electronic Health Record System in mid-2026.
Leaders expressed confidence that the system, developed by Oracle Health, has been upgraded to a point that it will “better serve veterans and clinicians.” They added that improvements will continue in preparation for the relaunch.
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“VA is ready to begin planning for the next Federal EHR deployments in 2026, while at the same time remaining committed to the continuous improvement efforts that have been our focus for the past 18 months,” Dr. Neil Evans, acting program executive director of the VA’s EHRM Integration Office, said in a news release.
The VA contracted in 2018 with Cerner, now part of Oracle, to build an electronic medical records system for its 170-plus medical centers that would be fully integrated with the Defense Department’s system, also purchased from and developed by Oracle Cerner.
The department introduced the system in late 2020 at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, following several delays resulting from infrastructure technology requirements and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly immediately, users of the system encountered issues with scheduling, prescriptions and workflow, slowing further rollouts.
By 2022, the program was used in just five medical centers and their affiliated clinics in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio, and the VA began announcing delays and pauses in further rollouts to address concerns.
That year, the VA Office of Inspector General found that the system, which was estimated to cost $16 billion over 10 years, caused harm to at least 149 patients at one facility, including a suicidal veteran who called the VA’s crisis line after his psychiatry referral was lost.
A complete pause was announced in April 2023 to fix the issues at the sites and integrate improvements into future rollouts.
The upgraded system has seen a dramatic reduction in the number of systemwide outages, according to the VA, functioning “100% of the time” for 10 of the last 16 months. More than 200 days have passed since the last outage.
“We paused deployments of the EHR for more than a year and a half to listen to veterans and clinicians, understand the issues, and make improvements to the system,” VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher said in a statement. “As a result of those efforts, veteran trust and system performance have improved across the board.”
The system was introduced to one facility during the VA’s pause, a joint deployment with the Defense Department at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, Illinois.
The launch marked the end of the Pentagon’s adoption of the system across its medical facilities and was deemed a success by VA officials.
“It’s going better than anyone expected,” Dr. Robert Buckley, the facility’s director, said during a House hearing in May. “And I’m going to say that because we have phenomenal staff, we have staff that are committed to being a high-reliability health care organization, to use whatever tools we need to, um, to make sure that our patients get the very best care possible.”
According to the VA, the Michigan sites will begin the lengthy process required for a successful deployment in the coming weeks.
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