Oracle Health (Oracle Cerner)

Oracle Health (Oracle Cerner) — Electronic health record vendor — the VA’s EHR modernization program · oracle.com — Cerner acquisition.

What it sells

Oracle Health is the health unit built on Cerner — acquired by Oracle for about $28.3 billion (closed June 8, 2022). It supplies Millennium, the electronic health record the VA is deploying to replace its legacy VistA system under the Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) program. Every number below is labeled for what it is, because this program’s numbers are routinely conflated: a CONTRACT CEILING is not a PROGRAM ESTIMATE, and neither is money spent.

The contract and the money

VA EHRM contract to Cerner, signed May 17, 2018 (10-year IDIQ); extended in 2026 with three one-year optional ordering periods (work through May 2031).

• $10 billion maximum (2018 contract ceiling) — The original 10-year IDIQ ceiling — the number the program was sold on. (Congressional Research Service timeline)
• About $16.1 billion (VA’s own life-cycle estimate, Jan 2019) — The ~$10B contract plus ~$6.1B for infrastructure readiness and program management. (GAO-25-106874)
• $49.8 billion (INDEPENDENT life-cycle estimate, IDA, Oct 2022) — The VA-commissioned independent estimate: $32.7B implementation (13 years) + $17.1B sustainment (15 years). (GAO-25-106874, citing Institute for Defense Analyses)
• Roughly $27 billion (contract ceiling after the 2026 extension) — Ceiling raised by almost $17 billion per the SAM.gov award notice as reported by Nextgov/FCW (Aug 2026) — a ceiling, separate from total program cost. (Nextgov/FCW, Aug 2026)
• About $48 billion (VA’s 2026 testimony estimate) — About $37B to complete deployment through 2031 plus ~$11B sustainment — VA’s figure to House lawmakers, which VA acknowledged was not an independent assessment. (Air Force Times, Sep 3, 2026)

On the record

What the government’s own watchdogs and prosecutors have published about this company, newest first. The summaries are ours; the findings are theirs.

• VA Electronic Health Record Modernization: Critical Actions Needed (GAO-26-108812) (2025-12-15) — Across five EHRM reports (2020–2025) GAO made 18 recommendations — 12 of them priority — and as of December 2025 the VA had not yet fully implemented 16 of the 18.
• Electronic Health Records: VA Making Incremental Improvements but Needs Updated Cost Estimate and Schedule (GAO-25-106874) (2025-03-12) — GAO: over 1,500 configuration changes implemented by June 2024, about 1,800 change requests still unaddressed as of Feb 2025, and 75% of surveyed users (Sep 2024) disagreed the system made them as efficient as possible; the 2022 independent $49.8B estimate must be updated.
• VA Needs to Strengthen Controls to Address EHR System Major Performance Incidents (VA OIG 22-03591-231) (2024-09-23) — The OIG counted 826 major performance incidents (outages, degradations, lost redundancy) totaling 1,909 hours from Oct 2020 through Mar 2024, found VA and Oracle Health lacked adequate controls, traced the weakness to how the May 2018 contract was written, and made nine recommendations.
• The New Electronic Health Record’s Unknown Queue Caused Multiple Events of Patient Harm (VA OIG 22-01137-204) (2022-07-14) — The OIG found the new EHR routed orders to an undetectable ‘unknown queue’ instead of the intended specialty care, laboratory or imaging location, without alerting providers — failing to deliver more than 11,000 orders at the Mann-Grandstaff VA (Oct 2020–Jun 2021), and linked the flaw to multiple events of patient harm. (Link is MeriTalk’s report of the OIG report.)

If this company is in your chain

• Tell Your Story — this site publishes documented family records. If this company is in your veteran’s chain, your documents belong on the record next to ours.
• VA OIG Hotline: 800-488-8244 — report suspected wrongdoing, inadequate patient care, or mismanagement straight to the Inspector General.

Middlemen data checked 2026-10-25 against the sources cited on this page. If a figure or a fact here is wrong, tell us — corrections are the point of this site.