Three U.S. senators have penned a letter to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs expressing apprehensions over the resumption of the agency’s EHR rollout in 2026.
The project has been on hold amid technical and patient well-being issues, but the VA plans to go live with Oracle Health at 13 medical centers next year. U.S. Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., wrote Dec. 19 to VA Secretary Doug Collins, requesting a briefing to address their concerns by Jan. 19.
“VA providers continue to report that they struggle to learn the new system, and that when they try to seek help, they have difficulty accessing the helpline and communicating with support staff,” the officials noted. “None of this is acceptable — implementing a new electronic health record should not result in dire staff burnout nor should it endanger VA patient safety.”
As of September, the EHR has a 96.7% incident-free rate over the prior 18 months, higher than the 95% target, while the platform has had a “significant drop” in user interruptions and a doubling of staff satisfaction since 2024, a VA spokesperson told Becker’s in an email. Becker’s also reached out to Oracle Health for comment.
“VA will respond to the lawmakers directly, but their letter would have been more timely had they sent it when Joe Biden was president because that’s when most of the issues they cite occurred,” the VA spokesperson stated. “The Trump administration won’t repeat those same mistakes and is already moving quickly to accelerate deployment of the system and bring the electronic health records modernization project to completion as early as 2031.”
