Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday that additional funding is critical as the VA works to replace the agency’s VistA electronic health record system with Oracle Health’s EHR.
Collins, speaking before the House of Representatives passed the FY26 MilCon/VA Appropriations on Thursday, also suggested during Wednesday’s hearing that momentum is precisely what is needed to get the project past the finish line.
This past month, in his first Capitol Hill appearance since his confirmation in February, Collins said the agency is looking to add up to 25 new VA medical center deployments in 2027. Scheduled for next year are 13 Oracle EHR deployments at VAMCs.
The Trump administration’s FY26 budget requested $3.5 billion for the EHR Modernization (EHRM) program, which is a $2.2 billion increase over the agency’s FY25 ask on the project.
“VA’s EHRM effort is moving the department from a decades-old legacy system to a modern system that is interoperable with systems at the Department of Defense and other federal partners, as well as participating community care providers, allowing clinicians to easily access a veteran’s full medical history anywhere they seek care,” Collins said in a prepared statement for the lawmakers.
“Acceleration of the EHRM rollout is now a top VA priority effort,” he said. “The FY 2026 funding will enable VA to complete planned deployments in FY 2027.”
Ready to roll
Collins was adamant that the existing EHR, VistA, is a drain on the agency’s resources and that the agency has a handle on the patient safety concerns, system outages and usability challenges that have plagued the system’s ongoing rollout.
“Everybody’s going to be up to speed, and we’re speeding up that integration process,” Collins told the lawmakers.
Collins also said the department, following a pause on rollouts last year, is holding Oracle accountable and pushing enhancements that clinicians want – “adding things such as [artificial intelligence].”
Sean O’Connor, former Navy lieutenant and founder of DexCare, told Healthcare IT News by email Friday that he is focused on how modernization efforts at the VA ultimately translate into real-world care access for veterans.
“Secretary Collins is right to prioritize the modernization of VA’s infrastructure,” he said. “A fully deployed, interoperable EHR is mission-critical, but it’s not the finish line.”
Turning infrastructure into outcomes is what turns federal investments into “real improvements,” he said.
“Veterans don’t experience data infrastructure – they experience how well it connects, orchestrates and delivers care. When it works, they can easily find appointments. When it doesn’t, they face waits, referrals that go nowhere, or missed opportunities for timely care.”
VA EHR funding likely to increase
It appears that increased funding, if not President Donald Trump’s full request for the VA’s EHR program in FY26, is likely.
Overall, the broad-based FY26 MilCon/VA Appropriations that passed Thursday provides $452.64 billion for the VA, which is $82.6 billion above the FY25 enacted level, according to the House summary of the final bill. Of that amount, the House approved $2,515,893,000 for the department’s new EHR, according to the full version of the bill after House lawmakers amended it.
“This increase reflects additional deployments and focus on current site optimization, sustaining infrastructure and supporting 19 live sites,” the bill says.
“It also assumes costs for activities related to the development and rollout of VA’s [EHRM] initiative, the associated contractual costs and the salaries and expenses of employees hired under titles 5 and 38, United States Code.”
The bill also requires the VA secretary to submit quarterly reports to Appropriations in both the House and Senate that detail “obligations, expenditures and deployment strategy by facility.” Further, it directs the VA to continue quarterly briefings on performance, costs, and changes to implementation and management plans and provide updates on integrating community care providers’ access to the new EHR.
“This bill includes a number of important provisions I fought for including smart investments in the healthcare that meets veterans’ needs, protecting veterans’ due process rights to ensure bureaucrats hands stay out of their constitutional rights, safeguarding the sanctity of life and needed construction funding to modernize VA facilities for the veteran patients they serve,” Mike Bost, R-Illinois, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs chairman, said in a statement about the bill’s passage by the House.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
