Cerner wins pentagon EHR contract
Cerner, an electronic health records (EHR) manager, has been awarded the 10 year contract to overhaul the pentagons EHRs for 9.5 million active and retired military personnel. The contract could be worth just under 9 billion over the potential 18 years of the contract's duration. The software is hoped to be fully implemented by 2023.
“If we allow the D.O.D. to put in a system that then can’t interconnect, that is not interoperable with other systems, that will be a big mistake,” said Representative Phil Roe, a Republican from Tennessee who is a physician and serves on the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “If we have to go to the appropriations committee and cut the money off and get them to slow down and reassure us that this won’t be a big mess, that’s what we’ll do.”

In recent years, hospitals and physicians’ offices across the country, spurred by a $30 billion incentive payment program included in the 2009 economic stimulus bill, have raced to meet deadlines for installing some sort of electronic health record. The goal was twofold: to reduce overall health care costs by eliminating unnecessary duplications of tests and to improve coordination of patient care.

The reality has fallen somewhat short. Among the chief complaints have been that the costly systems are difficult to use and, in some cases, unable to share patient records with other systems.

Cerner, an electronic health records vendor founded in 1979, teamed up with Accenture Federal Services and the military computing contractor Leidos for its bid.

A competing vendor, AllScripts, and its team were also among the three finalists, but many believed Epic Systems to be the leading candidate. The privately held company, based in Verona, Wis., says it holds the health records of nearly half of the country, and many of the nation’s largest hospital systems, including Cedars-Sinai health system in Los Angeles, the Yale New Haven Health System and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, use the vendor.