New Year, New Administration: What’s Next for VA in 2025

The Department of Veterans Affairs will focus on modernizing its electronic health record, bolstering community care and navigating emerging tech as the nation looks to not only a new year but a new administration under president-elect Donald Trump.

Throughout the year, VA has worked to modernize claims processing to support influxes from the PACT Act, integrate emerging technologies like AI and expanded innovate veterans programs to improve health care access.

Gilly Cantor, director of evaluation and capacity building at Syracuse University’s D’Aniello Institute for Veterans & Military Families, told GovCIO Media & Research that congressional bipartisanship on veterans issues could lead to new developments for veterans in 2025 under the new administration.

“I think we’re optimistic in some ways, because there’s a history of bipartisanship, when it comes to this population, than I think we observe elsewhere in society, and we have a lot of trust and confidence in particularly, I think, the veterans committees to advance some really important things,” Cantor said.

Advancing EHR Rollout

VA leaders will begin initial work in 2025 for the restart of the electronic health records system. VA Secretary Denis McDonough said at a press conference this month that his team has not yet met with president-elect Trump’s transition team, but plans to update them on the progress of the EHR rollout.

McDonough mentioned that, since the EHR went live, the six active sites have seen improvement in veteran outpatient trust scores, decreased wait times, less interruptions in patient care for clinicians and increases in clinician and staff satisfaction. However, he also noted that there remained dramatic room for improvement.

“We’ll be sharing all of those findings with the transition team, but remember that there is a relatively small number of political appointees here at VA. The overwhelming majority of VA professionals who work on EHR will be working on EHR on January 21, just as they were on January 19,” McDonough told GovCIO Media & Research.

VA enacted its EHR modernization in 2018 under Trump’s first administration to “modernize the VA’s health care IT system and help provide seamless care to veterans as they transition from military service to veteran status, and when they choose to use community care,” former VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said upon signing the contract with Cerner.

After the initial rollout, VA paused the program in 2023 to double down on monitoring its deployment at its six active sites. Trump’s second administration will inherit the next stages of deployment, which is expected to resume in mid-2026.

“We paused deployments of the EHR for more than a year and a half to listen to veterans and clinicians, understand the issues and make improvements to the system,” said VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher said in a press statement. “As a result of those efforts, veteran trust and system performance have improved across the board. Now, we’re ready to begin planning for new deployments in 2026 — while continuing to improve at all existing sites.”

Navigating Community Care

Andros noted that there will be a strong focus on improving information sharing between VA and community care facilities in the new year.

Trump’s first administration passed the bipartisan MISSION Act in 2018, expanding access to community care clinics to veterans and improving VA’s ability to recruit and retain talented medical providers. The act also led to improved reporting of staffing and vacancy data at the agency.

“The changes not only improve our ability to provide the health care veterans need, but also when and where they need it,” Wilkie said in a 2019 press release. “It will also put veterans at the center of their care and offer options, including expanded telehealth and urgent care, so they can find the balance in the system that is right for them.”

The increase in access to community care has prompted leaders to focus on improving health data sharing to ensure holistic patient health profiles. While policies like the MISSION Act have provided more avenues for veterans to seek care outside the VA network, it has also become harder to ensure the standards of care remain uniform outside the VA, according to Andros.

She said community providers will need to be held to the same standard as the VA to ensure that a veteran is receiving the same quality of care no matter where they seek health care.

“System interoperability matters. We have referrals going from VA to mental health centers in the community, and we’re not capturing the kind of information, the data we need, to know whether the people are better off in a private health system or in the VA,” Andros said.

Andros warned that though community care can be a boon for veterans receiving treatment, the VA specializes in delivering health benefits specific to their service, such as screening for exposures to toxic burn pits.

“We should be careful about, and we should be data driven about, when we send somebody outside the system, because we’re capturing more data about them when they’re inside the VA system,” Andros said.

Integrating Emerging Tech

Under his first administration, Trump signed the nation’s first AI executive order that launched the nation’s “American AI” initiative in 2019. Political experts have speculated that the next Trump administration will leave the development of true guardrails to Congress, but in the meantime, the VA has developed its Trustworthy AI Framework in 2023 that the agency adheres to when caring for veterans.

“We are not offering any directly veteran facing AI tools at this time, just because we’re not sure about the risk levels. … Our strategy there is to provide the tools to VA employees who are that human in the loop and make sure that the right information gets to veterans,” Dr. Kaeli Yuen, data and AI health product lead at VA’s Office of the CTO, said in October 2024.

Cantor said there is a lot of promise in emerging technologies like AI to “advance the interoperability issue paired with the data standards,” but warned that “data and technology is not like a panacea.”

“There’s more data, more technology, more silos … I can’t even contemplate what AI could or couldn’t do, but I think there are some challenges that would be best focused on outside of AI, number one being interoperability and standards,” Cantor said.

Improving Veteran Outreach

Despite the change in administration, Cantor anticipates the VA will build upon its work in improving outreach to veterans to help them understand and access the benefits they’ve earned through their service.

She added that the VA will continue to play a critical role in reducing veteran suicides in 2025, which has remained a largely bipartisan issue. The agency has previously done through a number of outreach programs and innovative initiatives like Mission Daybreak.

Trump’s first administration released the President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide (PREVENTS) program, which centered around raising awareness about mental health, connecting veterans to resources and facilitating research into suicide prevention.

“Just as there is no single cause of suicide, no single organization can end veteran suicide alone. That’s why PREVENTS aims to bring together stakeholders across all levels of government and in the private sector to work side by side to provide our veterans with the mental health and suicide prevention services they need. By employing a public-health approach to suicide prevention, President Trump’s roadmap will equip communities to help veterans get the right care, whenever and wherever they need it,” Wilkie said at the onset of the program in 2020.

Cantor said the VA “has started to acknowledge the role that communities play in reaching veterans that are most at risk.”

“We really, really hope to see that continue and grow. On average, they do better when they get their care at the VA with respect to suicide-oriented outcomes. Communities are a way to reach those veterans. They’re where people have relationships and trust. We really hope that that focus and investment outside the four walls of the VA continues with accountability,” she added.