The Department of Veterans Affairs 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.
The decision, announced on Dec. 20, comes after VA paused deployment to the EHR system in April 2023 due to patient safety and other concerns.
“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.”
Launched by President Donald Trump in 2017, the EHR is designed to provide a single, accurate, lifetime health record for veterans and include their health records from the Department of Defense, Coast Guard and other federal partners. The $16 billion project was expected to take 10 years to complete, but thus far has only been deployed at six 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 the 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.”
VA paused future deployment activities to focus entirely on improving the Federal EHR at sites where it is currently in use. According to VA, veteran outpatient trust scores have increased at all EHR sites since the beginning of the reset period — reaching 93 percent at Columbus VA, an 11.6 percent increase since Q1 2023; 88 percent at Walla Walla VA, a 4 percent increase since Q1 2023; 92 percent at Mann-Grandstaff VA, a 3.5 percent increase since Q1 2023; 85 percent at Roseburg, a 5.2 percent increase since Q1 2023; and 89 percent at White City VA, a nearly 6.5 percent increase since Q1 2023. Veteran trust at the North Chicago VA has increased to 90.8 percent from 90.2 percent since Federal EHR deployment in Q2 2024.
Since January 2024, there also has been a significant decrease in outages for the Federal EHR — with the system functioning 100 percent of the time for 10 of the last 16 months, and 99.8 percent of the time or better in the remaining months, according to VA. As of early this month, it has been more than 200 days since the last outage.
Clinician and staff satisfaction with the Federal EHR has also 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.”
For more information about VA’s overall EHR modernization effort, visit here.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.