VA Will Launch Electronic Health Records In Michigan During 2026

The Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Veterans Affairs issued a joint commitment in 2018 to implement a “single, seamlessly integrated electronic health record (EHR) that will accurately and efficiently share health data between our two agencies and ensure health record interoperability with our supporting community healthcare providers.”  The Department of Veterans Affairs halted deployment of the new Electronic Health Record (EHR) on April 21, 2023 to "prioritize improvements at the five sites that currently use the new EHR, as part of a larger program reset."  It had failed dismally:

VA to Continue EHR Deployments in Michigan in 2026
By David Raths - January 3, 2025
Following a reset phase announced in April 2023, VA touts improvements in EHR performance

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is beginning early-stage planning to deploy the Oracle Health-based Federal Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to four Michigan facilities — Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit, and Saginaw — in mid-2026.

This decision comes after VA has been working to make improvements to the EHR system during a pause in deployments announced in April 2023. These improvement efforts will continue while VA begins early-stage deployment efforts in Michigan.

“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,” said VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher, in a statement. “As a result of those efforts, veteran trust and system performance have improved across the board. Now, we’re ready to begin planning for new deployments in 2026 — while continuing to improve at all existing sites.”

During the reset period, VA paused future deployment activities to focus entirely on improving the Federal EHR at sites where it is currently in use. Throughout this process, VA said, it has taken steps to understand the issues, updated contracts to better hold Oracle Health accountable, made hundreds of improvements to the system, and instituted a simpler and more effective process to address concerns when they arise.

Here are some measures the VA provided to highlight the improvements:

• Increasing veteran trust in VA healthcare at all facilities with the EHR: Veteran outpatient trust scores have increased at all EHR sites since the beginning of the reset period — reaching 93% at Columbus VA, an 11.6% increase since Q1 2023; 88% at Walla Walla VA, a 4% increase since Q1 2023; 92% at Mann-Grandstaff VA, a 3.5% increase since Q1 2023; 85% at Roseburg, a 5.2% increase since Q1 2023; and 89% at White City VA, a nearly 6.5% increase since Q1 2023. Additionally, veteran trust at the North Chicago VA has increased to 90.8% from 90.2% since Federal EHR deployment in Q2 2024. These improvements are based on direct surveys of veterans and their experience with VA outpatient care.

• Dramatically decreasing outages, which disrupt patient care: Since January 2024, there has been a significant decrease in outages for the Federal EHR — with the system functioning 100% of the time for 10 of the last 16 months, and 99.8% of the time or better in the remaining months. As of early this month, it has been more than 200 days since the last outage.

• Decreasing the number of interruptions for clinicians, therefore minimizing slowdowns for veterans: The average user now experiences near zero interruptions (freezes or delays, for example) per day.

• Increasing clinician and staff satisfaction: Clinician and staff satisfaction with the Federal EHR has increased each year since 2022 — including increases in agreement in employee surveys with the phrases “the EHR is available when I need it” and “this EHR enables me to deliver high-quality care.” (VA did not provide percentage numbers for this measure.)

• Launching the EHR successfully in Chicago: During the reset period, VA launched the Federal EHR in North Chicago because it is a joint facility with DOD. This launch has been successful, with the facility rapidly increasing in productivity and use — outperforming previous roll-outs.