Another National Outage Sparks Renewed Focus on VA’s EHR Modernization
Following another national outage this week, attention has been drawn back to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Electronic Health Records (EHR) Modernization effort.
Why It Matters
The Spokane VA Medical Center reported an outage of its Oracle Health EHR system on Tuesday, lasting from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. local time. This outage prompted a technical investigation, as reported by NBC affiliate KHQ News.
CNBC later confirmed that the system outage disrupted operations at all six VA medical centers, 26 community clinics, and remote VA sites utilizing the EHR system.
Users experienced system freezes and were unable to access vital applications during the outage.
The cause of the outage was identified as a database performance issue, which was resolved after restarting the platform. The impact of the disruption extended to other federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense, the Coast Guard, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Larger Trend
While the VA announced plans to resume EHR deployments in mid-2026, it had been over 200 days since the last system outage was reported.
The Government Accountability Office highlighted that although the EHR Modernization Program had seen some improvements, there were still 1,800 outstanding configuration changes to address.
During a recent update to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, Dr. Neil Evans discussed ongoing efforts to enhance the EHR system. The VA’s EHR rollout has faced several delays since its initial launch in August 2020.
Seema Verma, from Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences, outlined plans to expedite the deployment of the EHR across the VA’s remaining healthcare facilities, emphasizing the need for a faster implementation process.
We have reached out to the VA and Oracle for their statements regarding the recent outage and will update this story as more information becomes available.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
