VA must ‘put onus back on Oracle’ to right EHR deployment, secretary says

The Department of Veterans Affairs is working to fast track the deployment of its new electronic health record system by giving Oracle more control over the rollout of the software, the agency’s head told lawmakers on Tuesday. 

VA initially signed a $10 billion contract — which was later revised to over $16 billion — with Cerner in May 2018 to modernize its legacy health record system and make it interoperable with the Pentagon’s new health record, which was also provided by Cerner. Oracle later acquired Cerner in 2022.

Since VA first rolled out the new software in 2020 at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, however, the EHR modernization project has been beset by a series of patient safety concerns, technical issues and usability challenges. VA ultimately paused most deployments of the EHR system in April 2023 to address problems at the facilities where the software had been deployed. The new EHR system has been implemented at just six of the department’s 170 medical centers. 

VA previously announced in December that it would be moving out of the operational pause and planned to roll out the new EHR software at a total of four Michigan-based medical sites in mid-2026. VA Secretary Doug Collins — who said during his confirmation hearing that “there's no reason in the world we cannot get this [modernization project] done” — subsequently announced in March that VA planned to deploy the software at nine additional medical facilities next year, bringing the total to 13 sites.

The VA secretary reiterated his support for the beleaguered EHR modernization program during Tuesday’s Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing, telling lawmakers that an early priority of his has been streamlining coordination between VA and Oracle. 

When he first took over as head of the department, Collins said Oracle personnel told him they could finish the project “in a short amount of time,” while “the VA side of the house was sort of [saying], ‘we're not going to do anything, and we're going to make it all individualized.” 

Collins said the department has “put the onus back on Oracle to actually, you know, provide what they're supposed to provide,” while also working to address internal problems “that really caused the initial problems in the rollout, where we had six different locations doing six different things.”

Part of this work, he said, included taking “eight or nine committees that were all having to touch stuff before they could get back to a decision” and condensing them down to one group to directly engage with Oracle on the EHR deployment. 

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told Collins she was “so impressed with the way that you have tackled the EHRM program and that rollout,” but also cautioned him to remain aware that “we have had an issue with VA employees showing up for the training and then utilizing the system.”

Both the Government Accountability Office and VA's Office of Inspector General have previously flagged insufficient end-user training as an area of concern when it comes to successfully deploying the new system. 

Many of the Democrats on the committee also railed against VA’s workforce reduction plans, which could lead to some 80,000 employees — or 15% of the department’s workforce — being let go. Collins and other VA officials have said the cuts would not impact mission-critical operations, such as clinicians and other healthcare professionals, and that the final figure of layoffs has not been determined. VA has also exempted 300,000 jobs from President Donald Trump’s federal hiring freeze.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., drew a correlation between the reduction in force efforts and the fast-tracked EHR deployment and inquired whether Collins “ask[ed] these VA clinicians and hospitals about how those cuts would affect future EHR deployments.”

“The issue of employment and EHR deployments are separate,” Collins said, adding that Dr. Neil Evans — acting program executive director of VA's Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office — has been included in conversations about the VA’s workforce reorganization efforts. 

Evans previously told lawmakers that some personnel in his office have already been affected by layoffs or have accepted the department’s deferred resignation offer. VA has also been working to cancel contracts deemed extraneous or unnecessary, and several of these terminated agreements were for services tied to the EHR modernization program.

The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, which was released on May 2, included a roughly $2.2 billion boost for the deployment of the new EHR system, but also cut $493 million from VA's IT systems. 

“You’ve just accelerated the electronic health record transition,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said during the hearing, adding “I think IT staff are important if we’re gonna make sure we don’t lose records of our veterans.”

Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., also expressed concern that the FY26 budget plan “proposes a significant reduction to the VA’s IT systems.”

He noted that the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency’s review of “nearly 1,000 unique systems at the VA isn't complete yet,” and asked Collins to consider “balancing your proposed reduction in funding until we actually get that report done to see what they find is needed.”

Collins told Boozman that “we're looking at that right now as far as what we do need, and we'll be able to work with you as we go forward on that.”