Three more VA hospitals went live on the federal EHR this weekend. That makes 17. The published schedule runs out at 45. The promise is all 164 by 2031.
Primary source: Edward Graham, “VA deploys new EHR at 3 Indiana-based medical facilities,” Nextgov/FCW, Aug 24 2026
Data: VA EHR Modernization — official Deployment Schedule (digital.va.gov, table updated Aug 24 2026); VHA About Us (Jun 2 2026)
On Saturday, August 22, the federal electronic health record went live at the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis and at VA medical centers in Fort Wayne and Marion, along with 16 associated clinics — 102,000 more veterans, 6,000 more staff.
Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence's statement is worth reading twice: VA has deployed at 11 hospitals in 2026, nearly doubling the number of deployments seen in the previous five years. If anything he undersells it — by VA's own schedule the five years before this one contain five go-lives, so 11 is more than double, not nearly. Either way it is a real acceleration, and it is the sentence that makes the arithmetic below land.
VA EHRM Deployment Schedule · retrieved Aug 25, 2026
Live today · 17 medical centers (6 before 2026, 11 in 2026)
Published forward schedule · 28 more, ending November 2027
Named on the schedule, total · 45
Program denominator · 164 medical centers and their associated clinics
Stated completion target · 2031
Contract: signed with Cerner May 2018 at $10B; extended this month by $17B across three option years to just under $27B. VA anticipates using the remaining ceiling by Q1 FY2027.
VA publishes exact dates through Oct 2026 and month-only dates for 2027. Nothing is published after November 2027 — the 119 facilities between the schedule's end and the 2031 promise have no dates at all.
Every site VA has put a date on
Each dot is one named medical center, placed at its go-live date and stacked into the cumulative count. Filled red dots are live. Hollow dots are scheduled. The dashed navy line is the trajectory that reaches your chosen denominator by December 2031. Hover any dot.
Set the pace after the published schedule ends
26 / yr
Lifetime pace (~3/yr)Best year: 2026 plan (13)2027 plan (26)Whatever 2031 needs (29)
Live today
17
10.4% of 164
Dated on the schedule
45
through Nov 2027
Undated remainder
119
no published date
Pace 2031 requires
28.8
per yr, 2028–2031
Projected finish
2032
at 26 / yr
Live (17)Scheduled (28)Trajectory required to hit the denominator by Dec 2031Your pace
The number that isn't the cost
The contract grew from $10B to just under $27B this month, and that is the number that gets written about. Divide it by the program's own denominator and you get roughly $165M per medical center — arithmetic, not an accounting figure, since VA does not publish per-site spend. The calendar is the harder constraint.
VA's lifetime pace since Spokane went live in October 2020 is 2.9 sites a year. Its best year is this one. Its published 2027 plan is 26. What 2031 requires, once the schedule runs out, is about 29 a year for four consecutive years — roughly ten times the lifetime average, and about 11% above VA's own most aggressive published year, sustained without a single slipped wave.
That is not obviously impossible. It is the first time the program would have to do the same hard thing four years running.
“The Trump Administration is committed to ensuring every medical facility across VA has this critical system by 2031 to improve experiences for both Veterans and VA employees.”
Paul Lawrence, VA Deputy Secretary, statement, Aug 24 2026 — via Nextgov
Where this dataset is thin
Read the denominator before you read the percentage
VA's own page contradicts itself. The prose on the deployment schedule page says “14 medical centers currently live.” The tables on that same page list 17. The tables were updated Aug 24; the sentence wasn't. Use the tables.
The units don't match across the sentence. Lawrence counts hospitals. The program counts “164 medical centers and their associated clinics.” VHA separately reports 170 VA medical centers and 1,380 facilities overall, and nothing published explains the 164/170 gap. Try the denominator selector: the same 17 sites are 10.4%, 10.0%, or 1.2% depending on which official number you pick.
The Indiana wave carried 16 clinics with 3 hospitals. So a “site” on this chart is not a constant amount of work. A cumulative-count line quietly assumes it is.
2027 dates are month-only. Everything after November 2027 has no date at all. The projection line past that point is arithmetic on an empty schedule, not a plan — which is exactly why the slider exists rather than a single answer.
“2031” is a stated goal, not a schedule. No published document commits a facility to a 2028–2031 date.
The press releases are advocacy. Site names and dates hold up; the surrounding narrative in the June and August releases is heavily partisan in both directions. Take the tables, leave the framing.
The honest version of the headline is not “VA is failing.” Eleven go-lives in a year, after a three-year pause, is the program working better than it has ever worked. The honest version is that the published plan and the stated promise stop touching each other in November 2027, and the four years in between are where the whole thing is actually decided.
⚠︎ AI-generated · not reviewed by a human · verify against the linked sources before relying on it. Site names and dates are transcribed from VA's published deployment schedule; projections past November 2027 are this page's arithmetic, not VA's.