CLEVELAND — A modernized way of storing and tracking veteran health records will be implemented in Cleveland in 2026, but some are concerned with its history of being linked to deaths.
Tim Hauser is a Desert Storm veteran. He served 10 years in the United States Air Force.
He told me he's lucky to have the VA because his medical needs are 100% covered, but lately, he said he's concerned with the direction the department is heading in.
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Hauser said he visits a few different VA medical facilities every month, so when he heard the news about the potential for the Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) system changing the agency's IT system in 2018, he started following it closely.
Oracle Health is the company providing the EHRM.
The Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Paul Lawrence, stopped by the Louis Stokes Medical Center on Tuesday for a 7-minute press conference about the electronic software.
Lawrence said, "I'm here in Cleveland because I've been checking in on our deployment of the new electronic health record. This is a process and a tool by which we'll be able to serve our veterans better. They will get better care, more information will be available for our doctors, and they'll spend much more time providing care instead of tracing history and looking for things."
The system won't go live in Cleveland until October 2026, but Lawrence plans to check in with the Louis Stokes facility every three to four months until then.
According to the VA's website, the EHRM will provide a "single, accurate, lifetime health record for Veterans and include their health records from the Department of Defense (DoD), U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), and other federal partners."
"The leadership team here is very, very strong. I know Cleveland is both special and complex in terms of the different things they do, so we're paying a lot of attention to some of those things," Lawrence said.
While the U.S. Government Accountability Office claims the system will ultimately cost $50 billion, Lawrence estimates it to be $16 billion over a decade for now.
"That's the first estimate, and there'll be another one," Lawrence told me.
Lawrence said the money being utilized for this project has already been allocated in a previously approved Congress budget.
Hauser believes it's a poor use of money that should instead go towards hiring more healthcare workers.
"That $50 billion can go to hire more doctors. You can hire more nurses. You can definitely improve the crisis line," Hauser said. "I think the system was rushed when they purchased it and now they're trying to rush it into being operable throughout the entire VA system because of the one person who forced the purchase to begin with."
The other concern Hauser has with this new system stems from a few years ago.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs confirms there have been four veteran deaths linked to the EHRM, three of which were in Columbus, Ohio.
"VA confirmed this news to us in a March 2023 briefing," the U.S. Senate committee told me via email.
I've asked the VA a few times for information regarding the deaths, but have not been provided any.
When Lawrence stopped by Cleveland this week, I also asked, "What went wrong [then] and what's different now?"
"No deaths have been linked to our healthcare system for quite some time and I don't even know when they were," Lawrence said. "What is different now than before is a handful of things. The secretaries brought intentional leadership to this. This was put on pause and nothing was done for the better part of two or three years while I just sat there. The product is different. It has gotten better. We've worked with the manufacturer of the product. I just think there's more energy. Our old health record cannot continue. We need this new one. It provides enterprise-wide functionality."
The U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs told me the Oracle-related incidents caused harm but were not necessarily the cause of death.
The committee further explained that the issues linked to the four veteran deaths stem from pharmacy functions and scheduling queues.
According to the Senate committee, patients’ medications were dropped off active medication lists and the Oracle system did not prompt staff to reschedule after a patient canceled or was a no-show.
Expediting modernization of VA’s electronic records is an absolute imperative, but it must done in a way that safeguards veterans’ health. Protecting veterans’ safety and health must be the core driver in any timeline. Vital right away are full transparency with strong oversight by Congressional committees and others. Protecting privacy, accuracy, and other key values, should be non-negotiable conditions.
In addition to the 2023 briefing, the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General released a report the year prior.
The report claims a patient safety team identified 60 safety concerns across nine core domains.
One of the biggest concerns noted was described as the "unknown queue."
The report also revealed that it had "identified safety events and patients harmed since the go-live at three facilities from Oct. 24, 2020, through May 8, 2022, there have been 1,134 reports of patient safety events related to the new EHR."
Department of Veterans Affairs Press Secretary, Pete Kasperowicz, said, "We’ve looked into these concerns and found that more than 99% of them resulted in no actual harm to Veterans and instead were the result of instructions from EHR leaders to aggressively flag every potential issue with the new system in an effort to fine-tune it. These efforts are continuing as the system is rolled out to ensure maximum patient safety.”
The report also identified one "catastrophic harm event" and "two major patient harms."
Catastrophic harm refers to death or a major permanent loss of function, whereas a major patient harm refers to a permanent lessening of bodily function.
And then, in September of 2024, another audit revealed 360 major performance incidents ranging from outages to incomplete functionality.
When I asked about that report, Lawrence told me, "That took place during the Biden administration and I'm part of the Trump administration."
"But wouldn't you want to look through those reports just to make sure that you guys are on a better path?," I asked Lawrence.
"I have looked through the reports. I have looked through the one you said, but again, you asked me about the details. I do not know the details of what took place during the Biden Administration," Lawrence responded.
The most recent report, released in August 2025, details how VA facilities have faced challenges getting medical records from community providers and importing them into the electronic system.
"The Biden Administration failed to solve nearly all of VA’s biggest problems, and Biden political appointees’ mismanagement of VA’s electronic health record modernization effort resulted in a program that was nearly dormant for almost two years. The Trump Administration won’t repeat those same mistakes and is already moving quickly to accelerate deployment of the system, ensure patient safety and bring the project to completion as early as 2031," Kasperowicz said.
Hauser believes the electronic system is being rushed and, therefore, will negatively impact veteran care.
"Purchased in 2018. Should be completed by 2031. That's rushed to you?," I asked Hauser.
"Yes, because they know there are problems with the system. They're not correcting the problems," Hauser answered. "Since they started reinstalling this system, there have been power outages, system failures, not being able to bring records up and it's amassed to over 1,900 hours of downtime. That's 80 days."
Hauser said he holds a great relationship with his personal doctors and nurses, and finds no issue in trusting them when it comes to the new computerized system.
However, Hauser said if and when he is admitted to the hospital, he fears his medical care will decline due to the software.
"Am I gonna trust that system when I go into the ER and the doctor says, 'Well, we're gonna give you this medicine.' That's when we're gonna question: Did the system tell you that or did the pharmacy tell you this, that it's okay to give me that? That's where veterans are gonna have to become more proactive when they do go," Hauser said.
Although fearful of the negative possibilities of this software, Hauser said he plans to continue receiving medical care from the VA.
I reached out to U.S. Representative Shontel Brown (D-OH) regarding the modernization of the VA's health record system.
She told me, "Veterans deserve the very best care, and that includes knowing their records are secure and accessible. Updating the VA’s electronic health record system is a critical step toward improving care, but that progress requires a VA that is fully funded and fully staffed. Therefore, I am concerned that the Trump Administration’s attacks on the VA workforce will make implementation more difficult, all the more reason to support VA employees, not demonize them. My office is monitoring this closely and will continue to urge the Administration to fully fund the VA and support its workforce.”
I've reached out to the VA with additional questions following Tuesday's press conference. I'm still waiting on a response to some of those.
