Democrats on the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs committees are demanding that the Department of Veterans Affairs explain a contract modification that raised the ceiling on its Oracle Health EHR deal by an amount the agency redacted in contracting documents.
Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the committees’ ranking members, raised the concerns in an Oct. 6 letter (first reported Oct. 13 by Bloomberg Government) to VA Secretary Doug Collins. They said the VA quietly modified the contract in August, extending it to 2031. The modification raised the ceiling by $16.9 billion, to $26.9 billion, according to a SAM.gov award notice.
The lawmakers said the VA has not explained the “unanticipated complexities” it cited for nearly tripling the original contract. They also said committee staff requested documents Aug. 27, ahead of a Sept. 2 House hearing on the program, and have not received them.
The letter seeks the unredacted modification, all VA-Oracle communications about the increase, the department’s latest life cycle cost estimate and the market research behind its conclusion that no other vendor could meet its requirements.
Mr. Takano and Mr. Blumenthal also asked who approved the increase and who ordered the redactions. They questioned why the VA is now covering costs they said Oracle had committed to absorbing, and whether Oracle is using veterans’ data to benefit its commercial products.
Other questions address elevated patient safety event reporting at go-live sites and whether the VA knew the Millennium EHR did not comply with Section 508, the federal accessibility law, when it signed the original contract.
The lawmakers gave the VA until Oct. 30 to respond. The letter faults the department for accelerating the rollout without assessing whether its workforce and infrastructure could handle the pace.
In a statement to Becker’s, a VA spokesperson said the department is accelerating the EHR’s deployment “after the program was nearly dormant for almost two years under the Biden Administration.” The VA paused most deployments in April 2023 to address safety and usability problems with the platform.
The spokesperson said the VA notified Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Takano and other members of Congress in September 2025 that the EHR modernization program’s costs are expected to total $37.2 billion through 2031.
The VA has deployed the system at 11 hospitals this year. Becker’s also reached out to Oracle and will update this story if more information becomes available.
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