The funding package to reopen the federal government gives the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) $3.4 billion for its Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) program, but Congress is withholding 30% of that funding until the VA proves the program can be successful.
President Donald Trump signed the package of funding bills into law on Wednesday evening, including a continuing resolution to end the government shutdown and legislation to fully fund the VA for fiscal year 2026.
However, Congress is withholding 30% of the funding for the VA’s EHRM program until July 1, 2026, contingent upon the VA completing a to-do list before that date.
Specifically, Congress is calling on the VA to deliver an updated life-cycle cost estimate of the program – something both lawmakers and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have previously called for.
Congress is also requiring the VA to provide a site-by-site deployment schedule, staffing projections necessary to support the proposed schedule, certification that the facilities already using the Federal EHR system have met the baseline metrics, and certification of four consecutive incident-free deployments.
The funding agreement also requires the secretary of VA to provide quarterly reports to the House and Senate appropriations committees detailing the program’s obligations, expenditures, and deployment implementation by facility, “including any changes from the deployment plan or schedule,” according to the text of the legislation.
It also directs GAO to conduct quarterly performance reviews of the EHRM deployment and to report VA’s progress to the committees on a quarterly basis.
“While the agreement is encouraged by deployment activities in VISN 10, the Congress remains vigilant of potential usability problems that have led to or contributed to instances of patient harm and reduced employee productivity,” according to a summary from the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Congress also expects the VA to work closely with its EHRM contractor, Oracle Health, to “resolve usability problems and dramatically improve training to ensure that when deployments restart the new system can be adopted easily by clinicians and healthcare staff,” according to the summary.
The VA’s EHRM program aims to provide a seamless experience for veterans as they transition from receiving care under the Department of Defense to receiving care under the VA, with a single, fully integrated EHR system.
The VA’s initial cost estimate for the EHRM program was $16 billion. However, after facing ongoing deployment delays, the VA requested an independent life cycle cost estimate on the program from the Institute for Defense Analysis in 2022, which said it totals $49.8 billion.
The VA has yet to provide an updated cost estimate after pausing new EHRM deployments in 2023 and spending more than two years in “reset” mode. The agency paused deployments due to user concerns.
The Federal EHR system will resume deployments to 13 sites in fiscal year 2026. The VA plans to deploy the new system to four Michigan facilities – Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit, and Saginaw – and nine additional medical facilities with sites in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Alaska.
Thus far, the VA has only deployed the new EHR system to six of 164 VA medical centers. Aside from the 13 planned deployments in 2026, the VA has not yet released a schedule for the remaining 145 sites.