This Independence Day, Let’s Talk About Veterans Freedom

As we celebrate July 4th and honor the brave men and women who served our country, we must also confront an uncomfortable truth: Our veterans are still fighting for their healthcare freedom. Specifically, access to their medical records and an ability to coordinate their healthcare.

Despite the billions already spent on electronic health records (EHRs), the VA’s current system — now under the Oracle Cerner umbrella — continues to fall short in delivering safe, coordinated, and efficient care.

Since the VA signed a $16 billion dollar contract and created a special Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization (OEHRM) to manage the transition to Cerner, headlines have been dominated by stories of delays, outages, errors, and skyrocketing costs. Multiple reports reveal critical failures that have put patient safety at risk — from missing prescriptions and lost referrals to life-threatening lapses in care. This system has not been effective, user-friendly, or trustworthy. The system was supposed to modernize the VA and deliver interoperability with the Department of Defense. Instead, it’s created new silos, required endless “enhancements,” and still can’t deliver a complete patient record at the point of care.

As if that’s not enough, what was promised as a “seamless, interoperable system” has instead led to:

Life-Threatening Patient Safety Risks

Veterans receiving incorrect medications — or no medications at all.
Life-threatening allergies and conditions missing from charts.
Lost referrals and lab results.
Delays in follow-up and care coordination.
Overreliance on manual workarounds by overburdened clinicians resulting in burnout.

According to multiple Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports and internal audits, these aren’t isolated glitches — they’re systemic issues stemming from poor implementation, inadequate testing, and fundamental design flaws. 16 billion dollars in cost, and an estimate of between 4,000 and 7,000 professionals have worked on this project — including major contractors such as: Booz Allen Hamilton, Leidos, Deloitte, Accenture Federal Services, ManTech, and CGI Federal.

Cost Overruns & Continuous “Fixes”

The original $16 billion price tag has ballooned with endless upgrades, extensions, and stopgap solutions. As of 2025, the VA has spent billions more on enhancements required just to make the system usable — and interoperability with DoD is still incomplete.

Despite these investments, the system frequently suffers from:

Performance slowdowns and outages.
Cumbersome workflows that frustrate providers.
A steep learning curve that diverts attention from patient care.

Provider Burnout & Documentation Fatigue

Veterans aren’t the only ones paying the price for the VA’s flawed EHR rollout — providers and clinicians are too. Doctors, nurses, and care teams across the VA report that the Oracle Cerner system has made their work harder, not easier. Clinicians describe spending excessive time navigating clunky, unintuitive interfaces. What used to take a few minutes now takes hours. Simple tasks — entering orders, reviewing patient histories, documenting visits — are slowed by system lags, confusing layouts, and unreliable data. “It’s like trying to care for patients with one hand tied behind your back,” one VA nurse shared. The new system’s flawed design, insufficient training, and missing functionality force clinical staff to constantly adapt, compounding frustration. The strain has been so severe that several VA facilities have halted further EHR deployments altogether — not because they oppose modernization, but because the system was destabilizing care delivery. VA staff retention — already a national issue — has worsened, as providers either leave or transfer to facilities still using legacy systems.

Loss of Trust in the Medical Record

Perhaps most damaging of all: many clinicians no longer trust what they see in the EHR. When you can’t be sure that the medication list is accurate, or that a test was actually ordered, you start second-guessing every step. And that undermines not only patient safety, but also the professional judgment of the people we count on to save lives. Each delay further erodes veteran confidence in the care they receive. Documented patient safety Incidents include:

14 critical safety issues were flagged by the VA in their April 2023 “program reset” review, prompting a pause in further Cerner rollouts at five sites.
Six cases of “catastrophic harm” — including four veteran deaths — were linked to EHR errors (such as scheduling lapses) at deployment sites in Spokane and Columbus.
2021: VA Inspector General (OIG) report found at least 148 veterans harmed due to medical record errors, and noted over 11,000 orders for specialty care or labs were never delivered.
Nearly 40 hours offline; over 500 major incidents compromising real-time care coordination.
89% of VA users disagreed that the Cerner system made them efficient, and 79% said it did not enable quality care.

After Years of Delays, Sunken Costs, and Harm — Isn’t It Time to Try Something Different?

Veterans deserve more than empty promises and billion-dollar misfires. After nearly a decade of EHR “modernization,” the Department of Veterans Affairs has poured over $16 billion into a system that has delayed care, endangered patients, and demoralized providers. Oracle Cerner was supposed to create seamless, interoperable care — but instead, it’s created new silos, new problems, and a mounting crisis of confidence. If more money, more infrastructure, and more complexity were the answer, we’d already have a world-class system. What if the answer isn’t a bigger system — but an easier one?

MedKaz® is the Answer!

MedKaz is a secure, portable, patient-owned personal health record that gives veterans control over their complete medical history. It doesn’t require EHR replacements, months of training, or layers of government contracts. Instead, it puts the solution directly into the hands of the people who need it most. The veterans. No matter where they go — from VA hospitals to civilian specialists — MedKaz allows any authorized provider to view the veteran’s complete record, including: progress notes, diagnoses, medications and allergies, labs and imaging, surgical histories and specialist notes, and care plans. MedKaz is patient-owned and portable, it bypasses the interoperability roadblocks that have plagued the VA for years. It empowers clinicians with immediate access to complete medical histories — without logging into multiple systems, requesting faxes, or relying on incomplete data transfers. In short, MedKaz adds value without adding complexity — giving providers back their time and trust.

MedKaz requires no system replacement. It works with existing VA and non-VA systems.
MedKaz operates independently. It adds zero downtime, no new logins, and no complicated tech to learn.
MedKaz could show measurable results within weeks. Fewer duplicate tests. More informed care decisions.
MedKaz is cost-effective. A pilot reduces continuing costs and protects veterans from the effects of poor care coordination.

This Independence Day, let’s choose real freedom in healthcare access. Let’s put veterans back in control of their care. It’s time to stop pouring billions into broken promises and start investing in what actually works. MedKaz offers a smart, simple, and cost-effective way to give veterans what they deserve: safe, coordinated, timely care — without delays, downtime, or disruption. A pilot program isn’t just possible — it’s urgently necessary. Let’s put MedKaz to work — before another veteran falls through the cracks.
Get My MedKaz Now!

Schedule Time to Talk!

This Independence Day, Let’s Talk About Veterans Freedom — to Access Medical Records