Chairman Barrett opened the House Subcommittee on Technology Modernization hearing by saying the Veterans Affairs Department is 117 days from a planned federal electronic health record (EHR) go‑live at four Michigan medical centers and that the ‘‘clock is ticking.’’ He said the committee will insist on transparency and a ‘‘no‑fail mindset’’ because veterans ‘‘cannot accept failure.’'

Ranking Member Basinski said she was troubled by press reports that Secretary Collins plans to eliminate 35,000 Veterans Health Administration positions and asked whether VA and its contractors had fixed problems reported at the six sites already using the new system. ‘‘The VA workforce is already stretched too thin,’’ she said, and warned cuts could undermine timely care and the EHR rollout.

Dr. Neil Evans, acting program executive director for the VA EHR integration office, told the subcommittee that VA plans to deploy the federal EHR to 13 sites in 2026 (including the four Michigan sites) and intends to complete deployments at VA medical facilities ‘‘as early as 2031.’' He said the migration will transition more than 27,000 VA employees from VISTA to the federal EHR and described recent improvements, including seven pharmacy updates planned before the Michigan go‑lives and a ‘‘seamless exchange’’ function that VA says reduced manual review of external data by more than 95 percent. Evans said VA completed superuser training for the Michigan sites (about 400 superusers, roughly 96 percent completion) and plans training for average end users beginning Feb. 1, with learning labs in March.

Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager for Oracle Health and Life Sciences, defended Oracle’s role and capability. She said Oracle and VA have met or exceeded an operational target for incident‑free time (95 percent incident free time for 21 consecutive months) and that Oracle is moving the federal EHR to Oracle’s cloud at Oracle’s expense. Verma said Oracle provides enhanced training, onsite teams and ‘‘war rooms’’ to address problems rapidly and that the company does not have rights to use veterans’ data to train its commercial AI models: ‘‘Absolutely not. We do not have any data rights, so we do not use that data to train our models.’'

Carol Harris, director of IT and cybersecurity at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), told the panel that GAO has issued multiple reports and 18 recommendations on EHR modernization and has marked 12 as priorities. GAO has not received VA’s most recent $37.2 billion estimate and noted an independent cost estimate (from the Institute for Defense Analyses) of roughly $50 billion that GAO continues to review. Harris said VA has not fully implemented many priority recommendations, has not approved a VA‑specific change management strategy, and currently has no plans to conduct an independent IV&V operational assessment — gaps GAO judges critical to reducing deployment risk.

Members asked about the program’s testing strategy. GAO warned that simultaneous testing and go‑lives at four sites will complicate a comprehensive IV&V end‑to‑end test and could increase risk because problems emerging concurrently across sites may strain resolution resources. Evans said VA adopted a market‑based approach that standardizes more than 1,000 workflows into a national baseline so tests can be performed at scale and said optimization projects at the six live sites have produced measurable improvement (for example, VA said it reduced a ticket backlog by more than 40 percent). Verma said Oracle’s optimization and testing processes have succeeded at prior implementations and that adding an IV&V vendor ‘‘would just add to cost and not necessarily add anything new.’'

Lawmakers also pressed on staffing and contracting. Evans said the program office has ‘‘just over a 100’’ open positions (a function of an expanded org chart) and that roughly 510 site positions are in recruitment for upcoming go‑lives; he said VA is hiring and relies on contract partners, including Oracle, Booz Allen and Accenture Federal Services, for support. Members questioned the December award of an Accenture integrator contract and whether the firm has sufficient authority relative to the Oracle Prime contract; the transcript records questions but no definitive explanation of Accenture’s precise authorities.

On costs, witnesses gave differing factual touchstones. Evans described a VA program cost estimate previously shared with the committee; GAO said it has not yet seen VA’s $37.2 billion estimate and cited an independent life‑cycle estimate of roughly $50 billion. GAO recommended VA produce an updated cost estimate and an integrated master schedule to inform oversight.

The hearing closed with Basinski urging caution and saying she remained unconvinced VA is ready for the next wave of go‑lives, and Chairman Barrett reiterating the committee’s readiness to assist while demanding accountability. The committee adjourned without taking formal votes.

Ending: The committee asked VA to provide requested cost and schedule materials to GAO and signaled it will continue oversight in the run‑up to the Michigan go‑lives.