The Department of Veterans Affairs has deployed the Oracle EHR to three VA hospitals in Indiana, marking the third wave of rollouts in 2026. The VA announced the change in a press release noting the system went live at sites over a recent weekend. The deployment is part of the broader federal effort to replace the agency’s legacy records system with a modern electronic health record across its medical centers.
The Indiana rollout covers the Northern Indiana Health Care System’s hospitals in Fort Wayne and Marion, and the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis. In addition to the three medical centers, 16 clinics associated with those medical centers were brought onto the Oracle platform as part of the deployment, according to the VA statement.
With the Indiana activations, the VA has implemented Oracle’s EHR at 11 hospitals during 2026. Earlier this year, deployments included four medical centers in Michigan in April and another four in Ohio and Kentucky in June. The VA stated that the latest round advances its goal of completing rollouts at 13 sites this year.
The department reports accelerated activity in 2026 compared with prior years. The VA has publicly scheduled its remaining 2026 implementations for October, when the Alaska VA Healthcare System and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center in Ohio are set to go live.
The EHR replacement effort began with a 2018, 10-year contract originally awarded to Cerner to modernize the VA’s aging and costly legacy system. Cerner was later acquired by Oracle. Early implementations encountered major performance problems; by 2020 only six of roughly 170 VA medical centers had debuted the new system and those sites experienced significant technical issues.
As a result of technical errors, patient safety concerns and mounting costs, the VA largely paused deployments for about three years. The pause, which included 2023 contract negotiations, was intended to address performance shortcomings, outages and other glitches identified at initial sites before resuming broader rollout activity.
The project resumed with renewed momentum in 2026, and the VA has emphasized remediation of prior issues while accelerating deployments this year.
The VA said Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence has visited all 13 sites planned for 2026 to meet with facility leaders, answer questions and help ensure smoother rollouts. The department also reported hiring dozens of staff to support the expanded deployment schedule, with plans for additional hires to facilitate the ramped-up timeline.
The VA has stated a commitment to deploy the new EHR at every VA medical facility by 2031. Officials framed the system as a means to improve the seamless transfer of military health records across federal departments, enhance continuity of care for veterans and resolve longstanding technology challenges.
Estimates of the total project cost remain variable. The article cites a federal watchdog figure that ranges from $16.1 billion to nearly $50 billion for the overall EHR effort. To support ongoing deployment and operations, the VA is seeking $4.2 billion in discretionary funding in its 2027 budget proposal, an increase of $840 million compared with the amount it received the prior year.
The cost uncertainty and prior performance problems have been central issues in oversight and public discussion of the program.
The VA indicated that two final EHR implementations for 2026 are scheduled in October at the Alaska VA Healthcare System and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center in Ohio. Achieving the 13-site rollout goal for 2026 is expected to be a step toward the department’s broader objective of nationwide adoption by 2031.
The article reports these operational milestones and planning details as part of the VA’s public communications on the deployment, along with assertions about staffing increases and leadership engagement to reduce friction during rollouts.