Lawmakers question VA health record’s costs and batched deployments

Even as the Department of Veterans Affairs prepares to resume go-lives of its new Oracle Health electronic health record system in 117 days, House lawmakers remain concerned about the modernization project’s total cost and the agency’s readiness for simultaneous deployments at medical facilities in the coming months.

VA paused most rollouts of the new software in April 2023 to rectify technical issues, patient safety concerns and usability challenges at the sites where the system has been deployed. Thus far, the new EHR system has been implemented at just six of VA’s 170 medical centers.

After working to address a host of problems at the sites where the software had been deployed, VA announced in December that it was moving out of its operational pause and would be rolling out the new system at four Michigan-based medical sites in mid-2026. VA Secretary Doug Collins later announced in March ...