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Oracle’s Federal electronic health records experienced a nationwide suspension on Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed to CNBC.
The agency said “all users” of the company’s federal EHR, including the VA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were affected. Six VA medical centres, 26 community clinics and remote VA sites have experienced disruption, the agency said.
“The affected VA health facilities followed standard contingency procedures during the suspension to ensure continuity in veteran care,” a VA spokesman said in a statement Thursday.
An electronic health record, or EHR, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history, updated by a doctor or nurse. This is a critical software within the US healthcare system, and outages can cause serious disruption to patient care.
Oracle is one of the largest EHR vendors thanks to its acquisition of the $28 billion medical record giant Cerner in 2022.
The company’s federal EHR first began experiencing problems around 8:37am Tuesday, the VA said. Users reported that the software had frozen and the application was inaccessible. The day after Oracle restarted the system, access was restored and cleared by 2:05pm on ET.
Oracle is conducting an investigation to determine the cause of the outage, the VA said. Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The outages show Oracle’s latest stumbling into a troublesome long-standing EHR rollout with VAs that are undermined by patient safety concerns. The agency began a strategic review of Cerner in 2021 prior to the Oracle acquisition and temporarily suspended the software deployment in 2023.
Four Michigan VA facilities are scheduled to deploy Oracle’s federal EHR in 2026.
In October, Oracle announced a brand new EHR with fresh cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities. The early adoption program for the software will begin this year, but it is not clear whether the VA has plans to use it.
Oracle is expected to report its third quarter revenue on Monday.
