VA secretary pledges progress on EHR rollout amid major workforce cuts

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins attempted to assuage lawmakers’ concerns Tuesday over how the agency plans to deliver critical health tech services amid drastic cuts to its workforce.

Appearing before the Senate Appropriations Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, Collins said the VA is full steam ahead on planned deployments of its oft-troubled electronic health record at additional facilities, and is also pushing forward on the rollout of its External Provider Scheduling tool.

The VA said in February that it had dismissed 1,000 employees, while the Associated Press reported in March that it planned to cut 80,000 staffers. The Oracle EHR system, meanwhile — plagued by technical problems since its launch during the first Trump administration — is scheduled to be deployed at 13 medical facilities by 2026. 

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., whose state is waiting on full deployment of the EHR at VA facilities in Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit and Saginaw, asked Collins how he would “ensure that outages, slowdowns and disruptions to veterans care will not occur once again under this new EHR deployment plan.”

The secretary acknowledged the Biden administration’s decision to pause the EHR rollout in the wake of several issues, and said his first move to get the modernization effort back on track was to bring together Dr. Neil Evans, other VA leaders and top Oracle brass. 

“There was differences of opinion,” Collins said, but the VA ultimately landed on taking “the Oracle standardization for coding” paired with “about a 10% gap to where VA would have our uniqueness.” 

The White House’s fiscal year 2026 budget calls for a $2.17 billion increase to the VA’s EHR initiative, a funding jump that Collins called “vitally important” to ensure doctors and veterans can communicate effectively. 

“You’re using a system that’s costing us literally hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s used nowhere else in the world except the VA,” he said. “So we need to move forward on this. I do believe we have a path that is safe, that is effective and will be cost-effective, because Oracle understands that they’ve got to provide this.”

While it doesn’t get nearly the amount of attention — or funding — as the EHR, the VA’s External Provider Scheduling (EPS) tool has also experienced some implementation speedbumps, with House lawmakers pushing for a quicker rollout of the technology that links agency scheduling teams to community providers.

Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., asked Collins for “reassurance that the EPS rollout will continue without disruption under the current administration.”

Collins said the VA is “going to continue with EPS” and has generated positive data thus far, including a reduction in the number of days it takes to make an initial contact in the system and then get a scheduled appointment. 

“So we’re doing everything we possibly can,” the secretary said. Those data points “will be definitely used as we go forward for the scheduling on what we can get.”