VA’s renewed EHR rollout ‘has been phenomenal’ so far, secretary claims
Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins told lawmakers Thursday that the VA’s beleaguered electronic health record modernization efforts have turned a corner with the successful rollout of the system this month at four Michigan facilities.
During an appearance before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee about the VA’s fiscal 2027 budget request, Collins said the April 11 deployment of the EHR at hospitals in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Battle Creek and Saginaw “has been phenomenal, even by industry standard.”
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., backed up Collins’ assertions, telling the secretary that “the reports have been very positive from the folks in Michigan.” The EHR introductions in the Wolverine State were the first VA deployments of the modernized system since 2023, when the agency paused implementation efforts to address safety concerns and renegotiate the contract with Oracle Cerner.
Late last year, House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle wondered aloud if the VA was ready for the resumption of EHR installations. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., who chairs the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, asked during a December 2025 hearing whether the agency would “run into snags like we have in the past.” And in a letter to Collins days later, Senate Democrats sounded the alarm over what they said was an “aggressive rollout timeline.”
Peters said from what he’s seen so far, he’s “cautiously optimistic that future rollouts are going to be just as successful” as what happened in Michigan. But with new EHR launches in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana scheduled for the summer, Peters said he’s concerned about how the VA will pull off that “accelerated deployment schedule.”
“How are you ensuring that facilities have adequate clinical and IT staffing, sufficient training time and on-site support to safely adopt the system without compromising patient care?” the senator asked Collins, noting that some personnel who led Michigan’s transition are now headed to Ohio for deployments.
Collins said the Michigan hospitals have processed 26,000 patients already and all indications are that the VA is in “the first stages” of turning the page on the many EHR failures following the signing of a $10 billion contract with Oracle Cerner during the first Trump administration.
Collins said he’s hearing from directors and employees at centers scheduled for EHR rollouts that say they’ve “been training” and are “ready to go now.”
“The four facilities that have went live, I commend them greatly,” the secretary added. “They took on what was told to them would be an impossible task because of past failures. They’ve overcome past failures and not only raised the bar, they pushed the bar further.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, threw some cold water on Collins’ optimism ahead of the EHR rollout at an Anchorage VA facility scheduled for October. She said she’s heard from some Alaska Veterans Service Organizations that there have been “difficulties” in transferring health records between VA and Department of Defense facilities.
“VA is going through their process. DOD is going through their own process in updating their medical record technology,” Murkowski said. “But we just need to know that it’s gonna be better. So can you give me that assurance?”
“Yes, it’s gonna be better,” Collins said. “I can point to Michigan.”
The VA’s fiscal 2027 budget request calls for a 24.7% jump in funding for EHR modernization to $4.24 billion.
