The Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center has switched to a new electronic health record system, as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs completed its final health-record deployments of 2026 at Cleveland and Anchorage, Alaska, according to the VA’s Oct. 26 announcement reported by Becker’s Hospital Review. The Oracle Health system went live Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cleveland medical center, the Alaska VA Healthcare System and 16 standalone clinics tied to those centers across Ohio and Alaska.
The two go-lives moved more than 163,000 veterans and 7,800 facility staff onto the new system, the VA said in its announcement, as reported by Nextgov/FCW. Cleveland’s rollout makes it the 13th VA hospital to adopt the record in 2026, completing the department’s deployment goal for the year under what the VA calls an accelerated schedule.
The new record is designed to follow a veteran across the system. Healthcare IT News reported that VA officials say the system makes it easier to transfer military health records among the VA and other federal partners and to integrate information from private-sector providers, so care stays consistent when a veteran changes facilities or needs emergency treatment elsewhere. Nationwide, more than 780,000 veterans and 42,000 VA clinicians and staff now use the system, Becker’s reported.
The Cleveland launch follows earlier 2026 rollouts in Michigan in April, southern Ohio and Kentucky in June, and Indiana in August, according to Becker’s. The program’s road here was long: the VA signed its original contract in 2018, Oracle acquired the original vendor, Cerner, in 2022, and deployments paused for almost three years after a 2023 “reset” meant to address patient-safety, configuration and user-experience problems, Healthcare IT News reported.
“VA has fulfilled its goal of deploying this new system to 13 hospitals in 2026, a stark turnaround from the nearly two-year delay seen under the prior administration,” VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence said in the department’s announcement, as reported by Becker’s Hospital Review. Lawrence, the department’s lead official on the rollout, said this year’s work lays the groundwork for deployments at 26 hospitals in 2027.
For Northeast Ohio veterans, the change is mostly behind the scenes: appointments, prescriptions and records at the Cleveland VA and its Ohio clinics now run through the new platform, which shares service members’ health records with the Defense Department, according to ExecutiveGov’s report on the announcement.
What happens next comes in January, when the VA’s 2027 wave begins at four facilities in Wisconsin and Michigan, according to Becker’s. The department’s stated goal is to have the new record running in every VA facility by 2031.