Why It Matters
Michigan's veterans got a new electronic health record system in April. Now Congress is coming to find out if it's actually working.
The House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization will hold a field hearing in Grand Ledge, Michigan, on June 12, examining the delivery of quality healthcare to the state's veterans and servicemembers. Four Michigan VA facilities went live on Oracle Health's Electronic Health Record system on April 11, ending a three-year pause triggered by safety failures, including a system scheduling error linked to a veteran's death. This hearing, roughly two months after that go-live, is a direct accountability check.
The EHR Rollout
The VA's April 11 go-live at the Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit, and Saginaw VA facilities marked the first wave of 13 planned deployments in 2026 under an accelerated schedule. It was also the first deployment after the VA paused most EHR rollouts in April 2023 following serious performance and technical problems at earlier sites.
A VA Office of the Inspector General finding determined the EHR system caused a scheduling failure that contributed to a veteran's death in Columbus, Ohio, after the facility failed to follow up on a missed appointment. Senate Democrats, including Michigan's Elissa Slotkin, wrote that EHR problems had "created life-threatening problems and ongoing upheaval for veterans' ability to get the health care they need," according to Federal News Network.
Michigan was chosen as the relaunch site. That decision made it ground zero for proving the system has been fixed.
The Political Stakes
Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI), who chairs the subcommittee and represents a Michigan district, had already put VA officials on notice before the April launch. "The clock is ticking down in Michigan for this to go live, and the time for promises is over," Barrett said at a prior subcommittee hearing, according to Healthcare Dive.
Holding a field hearing in his home state two months after go-live is a direct follow-through. The format, traveling to Grand Ledge rather than convening in Washington, signals the intent to hear from veterans and facilities staff on the ground rather than from agency officials at a witness table on Capitol Hill.
Ranking Member Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) had also pressed VA officials before the Michigan launch, asking directly whether the agency and Oracle were truly ready, "given what you have shared...that the VA and Oracle are ready to deploy this system and that we will not hear the same concerns that the first six sites raised." Her presence on the subcommittee ensures the Michigan veterans' healthcare hearing will have bipartisan scrutiny of the rollout's performance.
A May 2026 report offered some positive data. The American Legion reported that 78 percent of VA hospitals receiving an Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating earned four or five stars, with Detroit's John D. Dingell VA Medical Center among the top performers. That data point may provide context for the hearing, but the subcommittee is likely to probe whether those quality metrics have held since the EHR transition went live in April.
The Bottom Line
The hearing lands against a broader backdrop of concern about VA operations. A Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee report alleged that Trump administration officials, using an AI model associated with DOGE, cancelled approximately 2,000 contracts for veterans and VA facilities, according to a report released by Senator Blumenthal. Local Michigan reporting captured community anxiety over what those cuts could mean for veterans' service programs, even as VA Secretary Doug Collins stated that "veterans' benefits are not getting cut," per Fox 2 Detroit.
The tension between assurances from agency leadership and documented disruptions on the ground is the kind of gap a field hearing in Grand Ledge is positioned to surface.
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