VA completes 2026 EHR system deployments with final two site go-lives

The Department of Veterans Affairs rolled out its new electronic health record system at two medical facilities in Ohio and Alaska on Saturday, marking the end of its 13-site deployment plan for 2026. 

The Oracle Health EHR software went live at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio and the Alaska VA Healthcare System in Anchorage. VA said those two deployments have migrated more than 163,000 veterans and 7,800 facility staff to the new system. 

The modernization effort — which VA has moved to accelerate under the Trump administration — is part of a broader federal push to deploy a single interoperable federal EHR system across agencies like the Defense Department, Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

VA initially signed a $10 billion contract with Cerner in May 2018 to modernize its legacy health record system, known as the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA. Cerner was subsequently acquired by Oracle in 2022 and rebranded as Oracle Health. 

The agency’s EHR overhaul, however, has been beset by numerous challenges since the first site go-live in 2020, including technical and usability challenges, cost overruns and patient safety concerns. The agency subsequently paused most deployments of the new Oracle Health software in April 2023 to address the issues plaguing the modernization project. 

The Biden administration announced plans in December 2024 to resume deployments of the new software at four Michigan-based VA medical facilities in 2026, although current VA Secretary Doug Collins raised the total number of site rollouts this year to 13. 

“The success we saw this year lays the groundwork for deployments in 26 hospitals in 2027, and meeting our goal of ensuring EHR is in every VA facility by 2031,” VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence said in a statement. 

The final batch of EHR system deployments this year comes after VA and Oracle moved last month to extend their contract to include an additional $17 billion ceiling and three one-year option periods — a move that reportedly surprised lawmakers from both parties.

During a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing last month, Democrat and Republican lawmakers expressed bipartisan concerns about the contract extension and voted 19-0 in favor of a motion from Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., to subpoena both Oracle Chairman and Co-founder Larry Ellison and Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia to appear before the panel to further discuss the EHR modernization project’s cost and status.

Lawrence, who appeared as a witness before the committee, defended the extension and said the modified agreement was needed because VA was about to exhaust the initial contract’s cost ceiling.

“What I can tell you, since I showed up at the end of March [2025], we have spent exactly the money you have allowed us. We have deployed in the schedule exactly as we said we would,” Lawrence told lawmakers at the time. “We have had serious conversations with our contractors that this is the money available to do the things we need to do.”