VA invests record $4.8 billion in health facilities improvements

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has budgeted an all-time high of $4.8 billion in fiscal year 2026 to modernize, repair and improve its health care facilities across the country. As part of the Veterans Health Administration’s nonrecurring maintenance program, funding goes to one-time maintenance items, including equipment replacements and infrastructure upgrades.

Funding includes $2.8 billion to repair and upgrade outdated infrastructure systems in medical facilities and $500 million for major building upgrades. An additional $500 million will modernize medical centers for current and future care. That includes projects like the recent fourth-floor patient room renovations at Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple, Texas.

“We converted the patient rooms to single occupancy, and now there is enough space for family members to spend the night with their veterans while receiving care,” says Canaan Brumley, spokesperson for the VA Central Texas Health Care System. Updates included the addition of lifts to support patient movement, private bathrooms and Texas-inspired imagery to provide comfort to patients.

The nonrecurring maintenance program also allocates $1 billion for preparing facilities to join the federal electronic health record (EHR) system. This brings VA hospitals into the same EHR system used by the Department of Defense, streamlining support as service members transition to veteran status. Nationwide implementation is targeted for 2031.

The Dayton (Ohio) VA Medical Center is among nine VA facilities moving to the federal EHR in 2026. Making the shift has required Dayton to upgrade a significant amount of infrastructure — including adding approximately 38 miles of fiber-optic cable, as well as Category 6 cabling, across a 283-acre campus. The upgraded cables feature shorter runs to mitigate potential latency issues. The project also upgrades data closet cores and switches.

“The new fiber allows our medical center to meet the growing demand for speed, capacity and reliability,” says Jennifer DeFrancesco, director of the Dayton VA Medical Center.

DeFrancesco adds that this new information technology backbone “has improved performance across all of our network systems, including internal networks, such as our building management systems and physical security systems, and external networks, such as our internet access.”