From October 2020 and March 2024, the VA's Oracle Health EHR system experienced 826 "major performance incidents," a Sept. 23 report from the VA's inspector general office found.
The incidents included system outages, performance slowdowns and incomplete functionality.
"These issues impacted the system for a total of 1,909 hours and 26 minutes," the report said.
In 2018, the VA signed a contract with Cerner, now Oracle Health, to revamp its EHR system.
Due to ongoing problems with the EHR system, the VA halted all scheduled rollouts in July 2022, with the only exception being the deployment at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Chicago in March 2024.
While the report notes that the number of issues began to decline by the third quarter of 2023, problems persisted following the March rollout.