House Veterans Affairs panel presses VA and Oracle on EHR restart, timeline and safety

The House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Technology and Modernization heard extensive testimony Wednesday on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Electronic Health Record Modernization program and the agency’s plan to resume deployments at four Michigan facilities in mid‑2026.

The subcommittee’s chairman, Chairman Barrett, opened the hearing by saying, “VA needs to demonstrate how this system has improved and explain why this program can succeed before starting up again.” The session included witnesses from VA, Oracle Health, the Government Accountability Office and the VA Office of Inspector General, who described both progress and remaining risks.

The hearing centered on three connected problems: unresolved patient‑safety and operational issues at sites that already use the Oracle Cerner‑based federal EHR; wide disagreement and uncertainty about the program’s schedule and cost; and whether recent VA staffing reductions will affect future deployments. VA plans to restart go‑lives at Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit and Saginaw, Michigan, after a reset that paused deployments in 2023.

Dr. Veil Evans, Acting Program Executive Director of the VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office, told the subcommittee that the department remains committed to “implementing modern interoperable health information technologies across the entire VA health care system.” Evans said VA used the reset to complete foundational work, including data migration into Oracle’s Health Data Intelligence environment, role standardization and performance improvements, and that the Michigan sites have been under “current state reviews” since early January.

Oracle’s Seema Verma,…