A U.S. Army veteran is helped out of a Department of Veterans Affairs building after receiving health care in 2021.

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Jasmine Laws

By Jasmine Laws

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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has been making changes to veterans' health records as part of a move to modernize the system, and more VA facilities will be using the new system in 2026.

The Electronic Health Record Modernization program (EHRM) is making all veterans' health records electronic on a different platform, allowing health care providers to more efficiently store and track patient data.

Why It Matters

While the VA has said the transition will ensure "provision of high-quality, safe, and efficient health care to those who have served in the nation’s military," there have been reports of the system not working all that well.

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According to a recent Washington Post exclusive, there have allegedly been cases where health providers have lost access to patients' records for two days after software updates, prescriptions have been logged with the wrong dosages and one nurse reportedly said it listed one of her patients as dead.

However, VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz told Newsweek the Washington Post "is cherry-picking years-old reports and events in a desperate attempt to make the Trump Administration look bad."

"In reality, mismanagement of VA’s electronic health record modernization effort by the Biden Administration’s political appointees resulted in a flawed program that was nearly dormant for almost two years," he added.

A U.S. Army veteran is helped out of a Department of Veterans Affairs building after receiving health care in 2021.

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What To Know

Ultimately, veterans' health records are staying the same, but the application that clinicians and veterans use to access their records is changing, Dean Sittig, a professor and executive director of the Clinical Informatics Research Collaborative at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told Newsweek.

The VA is moving to "a state-of-the-art electronic health record that is in widespread use across the nation and even the world," he said.

He added that the previous system was originally developed in the early 1990s and "had been heavily customized by many of the VA medical centers around the country," which he said "made it difficult to upgrade and maintain and limited the VA going forward."

"As with any computer application, changes must be made on a regular basis as we learn how to make them better," Sittig added.

The VA's Federal Electronic Health Record system (EHR) system will streamline a number of services for veterans, according to the VA's website.

It will mean, for example, that veterans no longer have to manage the transfer of their records when they separate from the military as they will already be in the system. It will also mean that veterans will have more "productive" appointments, as healthcare providers will have access to all their health records, and veterans will spend less time repeating past procedures and tests as a result.

The VA said that before the EHR system, VA providers were unable to access high-quality X-ray images from the Department of Defense, but after the implementation, VA providers can now access them, allowing them to make more informed decisions.

The system is currently in use at six VA facilities, including:

The positives of the VA transitioning to this system is that the technology will be easier to maintain, Sittig said, and he added that it would enable the VA to "centralize and better manage patient care."

"This is one of the cornerstones of delivering the highest quality of care. Reduced variability should lead to higher quality," he said.

However, he added that "change is hard for everyone," and said the transition will require VA clinicians to "learn a new system," and for the VA to "adapt" to the system.

"Getting used to the new system will come at a cost in terms of efficiency and potentially even patient safety, but in the long run, these changes should be beneficial to all veterans, VA employees, and the government who has to pay for the care and EHR," he said.

In regard to the issues with the EHR system raised by the Washington Post, Kasperowicz said the report "ignores" the fact the VA has made many improvements to the EHR since 2020, that clinician and staff satisfaction with the system has increased each year since 2022, that productivity has increased for all EHR sites and that as of September 2025, the system saw a 96.68 percent incident-free rate over the prior 18 months, higher than the 95 percent target rate.

What People Are Saying

Dean Sittig, a professor and executive director of the Clinical Informatics Research Collaborative at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told Newsweek: "The old system was near end-of-life. They had to either undertake a huge rewrite of the existing system or purchase a new commercial EHR. Change is hard. There is no getting around that. It will take tremendous fortitude on the part of the VA and government leadership to hold the VA together during this time of tremendous change.

"The new system can work if, and that's a big if, the government can hold it together, Oracle can deliver the product, the VA employees agree to make some changes to their workflow, and the various VA medical centers can agree to give up some of the local control that they have had for the past 40 years."

What Happens Next

In 2026, four Michigan facilities — Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit, and Saginaw — will be adopting the system by the middle of the year, and another nine facilities will also be implementing the system.

The additional nine facilities include:

Full implementation of the system across every VA facility is currently set for early 2031.

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