All veteran affairs centers nationwide are transitioning to a long-awaited electronic health record system.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. Paul Lawrence is overseeing the implementation of the new system.
After three unsuccessful attempts since 2001, the Department of Veterans Affairs is currently on its fourth effort to modernize its outdated electronic health records system, according to a March update from the Government Accountability Office. VA relies on its electronic health record system to manage the health care needs of nearly 9 million veterans and their families.
Lawrence is visiting the Dayton VA today and is with us live right now.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Frazier: Tell us about this new record system.
Lawrence: Well, I think you know that President Trump has directed us to really take great care of our veterans. And the way we do that in healthcare is making sure our doctors have the very best tools to help our veterans. Electronic health record is a tool that enables our doctors to spend much more time talking to our veteran patients, and less time looking for information and checking on tests and the like. So it's really going to be a game changer in terms of getting us into the most current tools available to help our veterans.
Frazier: You touched a little bit about some of the benefits of the system. What other benefits can veterans and staff expect once it's implemented?
Lawrence: Our veterans are going to spend much more time with their doctors talking about their situation, not repeating their history and wondering if the records are all there. Our doctors are going like it a lot more and we've gotten this feedback already because they'll spend less time cutting and pasting and clicking and searching, and more time practicing medicine. The VA as a whole is going to benefit because with all the information we'll one day have about our data, about our veterans, we think there will be tremendous innovation coming forward so we think that there were so many positive effects.
Frazier: What are some of the challenges the VA faces in implementing this new system?
Lawrence: Well the big one is, believe it or not, it's not a technology problem. It's much more about changing how our doctors and folks do business, right? A lot of the stuff now is homegrown in the different facilities. This will be one system that everybody has to follow. So we're teaching them a lot about the new ways to go about doing the business of practicing medicine. So a lot of it is just getting folks comfortable with the change, which will be kind of an issue in the short term, but in the long term will be really good for the veterans and the doctors as well.
Frazier: You mentioned Donald Trump wanted to ease this system for the users of it, veterans and staff. Were there other catalysts for this change?
Lawrence: Well there was a recognition that one of the things that happens when service members leave the Department of Defense, or Department of War now, they transition to being veteran, they were already using this system. So having VA on another system made it very hard for the records to transfer, so when folks would shop and say, "Hey, I'm a veteran, something happened to me in service," we would have to go and find out what that was. Now we'll have the same system, the records will transfer seamlessly and it will be as though you never did leave. And everybody will have the information, so that was a really a big thing we wanted to make sure that our veterans got good straightforward care.
Frazier: What brings Dayton VA the pleasure of your business today?
Lawrence: Well, they're on the schedule. So there was a pause in the previous administration rolling this out. And when Secretary Collins came in, he said, let's accelerate the schedule. Dayton was chosen as one of the 13 sites that will go live in 2026. So I'm here checking to make sure we're all ready to go, that this is on time, that there's nothing standing in their way. This is my second visit here. I came here early in the summer, and I'll probably be back again before they get ready to go live in June. So it's a very serious undertaking. I wanna make sure everything's going well. So far, so good. Got a great team here, which I suspect many of your listeners know, and they're going about doing the right work. So we're just making sure we're on track.
Frazier: Will all VA centers go live with the new system right away or is it going to be center-by-center?
Lawrence: Well, it's going to be a little bit of both. We have a schedule to roll it all out so that we'll be completed by 2031, a little bit longer than we would have liked, but things were paused previously, so we're trying to catch up. But yes, we'll all be on the same record, and we'll have tremendous possibilities, one of which is when folks from Ohio decide to go spend their summer and winter in Florida, the record will be there. So when they walk into a VA facility, it would just be like being back home.
Frazier: When do you expect the system to go live in Dayton, and do you have a specific launch date?
Lawrence: Absolutely. It's June 6 of 2026.
Frazier - What other goals do you have as Deputy Secretary? You were appointed by Donald Trump earlier this year.
Lawrence: Well, one of them is broadly to make sure our veterans are getting great care. So I focus on how timely they get their benefits. So, for example, if you file for something known as disability compensation, you've been hurt in service, we want to get that benefit right away. When we showed up, it was taking about five months. Now it's taking a little more than two. So we care a lot in terms of veterans' feedback about the timeliness of how we provide them benefits. If you apply for other benefits, it was taking months, now it's taking days. Things like that.
It's getting them access to care outside of the VA system, for example. If you're too far away or we can't get you specialty care, we'll get you care in the community. So we want to make sure that's timely as well. So it's a range of things making sure we just give awesome service to our veterans in terms of healthcare and the benefits they've earned.
