Originally published: 2024-12-20T16:00:00+00:00. Historical source article: benefits, rules, amounts and deadlines may have changed. Check the official source for current information.
WASHINGTON — Today, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it is beginning early-stage planning to deploy the 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 made critical improvements to the EHR system during a pause in deployments announced in April 2023, which has helped the system better serve Veterans and clinicians — and resulted in improved Veteran trust at all sites that use the EHR. These improvement efforts will continue unabated 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. “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.”
“VA is ready to begin planning for the next Federal EHR deployments in 2026, while at the same time remaining committed to the continuous improvement efforts that have been our focus for the past 18 months,” said Acting Program Executive Director of the EHRM Integration Office Dr. Neil Evans. “We’re going to keep listening to and learning from Veterans and VA staff every step of the way.”
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 has listened to Veterans and VA staff, 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. As a result of these efforts, the EHR has improved significantly for Veterans and clinicians, including:
- Increasing Veteran trust in VA health care 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 the result of 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.”
- 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 rollouts.
VA will kick off pre-deployment activities in the coming weeks. Given the time it will take to prepare to activate the Federal EHR, these facilities are expected to go live with the system in mid-2026.
For more information about VA’s overall EHR modernization effort, visit https://www.ehrm.va.gov/.
Source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Its Veterans is an independent publication and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. government.
