Veterans Affairs Officials will resume its efforts to overhaul electronic health records with four new sites in Michigan in mid-2026, restarting the controversial program roughly three years after its termination due to concerns about patient safety.
The heads of department said they were convinced that system improvements and VA processes will produce better results this time around, and said the decision to move forward needs to be made now to put the infrastructure in place to continue the work over the next year.
“We said we were going to take the time we needed to get it right, to get to a point where we were satisfied it was time to start preparing for deployment again,” said Dr. Neil Evans, director interim executive of the program VA EHRM Integration Office. “We spent a little over a year and a half focused on this. We are seeing positive results from this effort.
“We are now talking about restarting planning for future deployments.”
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The health record overhaul project, launched by President Donald Trump in 2017, was designed to align veterans’ health records with military records for the first time.
The project was initially expected to last 10 years and costs $16 billion. But nearly eight years later, only six of the VA’s more than 170 medical sites use the software.
VA Secretary Denis McDonough announced in April 2023 a complete pause in the rollout after concerns from investigators and lawmakers over patient safety related to lost or missing records of active patients.
Since then, VA has looked into those errors and worked with Oracle officials to improve the system, Evans said.
“Patient safety will always be the Veterans Health Administration’s top priority,” he said. “Before performing the reset, system issues had been identified. Some of them were configuration changes, others were process changes. We identified a list of items that needed to be addressed to improve or reduce patient safety risks, and these were completed.
“We always expect to see people voice their concerns, because that’s how we find problems we can solve. But overall, we have found that past commissioning has resulted in fewer patient safety issues.
In March, VA administrators at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Center in Illinois switched entirely to the new health records system. This site is jointly managed by the Department of Defense and VA, which presents a unique opportunity to train personnel from both agencies simultaneously.
VA officials described the rollout as a success, reporting fewer problems and complaints than at previous sites. They also said veterans’ trust scores at the five facilities where the new records system is used have increased since the rest period began.
The number of system outages – a common complaint among staff using the system – has also decreased dramatically in recent months. Program officials said more than 200 days have passed since the last outage.
“We have paused EHR deployments for more than a year and a half to listen to veterans and clinicians, understand the issues and make improvements to the system,” said VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher. “As a result of these efforts, veteran confidence and system performance have improved at all levels. »
Pre-deployment preparations will begin at Michigan sites in the coming weeks. It’s unclear whether Trump’s inauguration for his second term will change that timeline.
Evans said the restart announcement was made now to prepare Michigan sites for the work ahead, including developing training programs for staff.
A specific launch date is expected to be announced before early 2026.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, DC since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned him numerous honors, including a Polk Award in 2009, a National Headliner Award in 2010, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism Award and the VFW News Media Award.