The Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization contract, which will be awarded this year, is not poised for success as it currently stands, according to an article in Forbes.
In its approach to industry, leaders of the contract’s program office say they want a “state-of-the-market” electronic health record system that is “off-the-shelf.” Those terms suggest that the department is envisioning an enterprise system mirroring those used in private-sector healthcare, a model that has not brought the kind of integration that DoD wants, according to Forbes.
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“That transition was intended to facilitate communication and collaboration across the healthcare community, but the information service companies that have leveraged federal rules to sell their record systems profit more from limiting access to paying customers. Some major medical complexes have paid over a billion dollars to install their enterprise systems, and yet still have to pay high fees to move information beyond the boundaries of their in-house information systems,” the article reads. “Thus, the Obama-era incentives have promoted digitization in healthcare without promoting integration. In some ways, the system is more balkanized now than it used to be, because the cost and complexity of the installed technology deters sharing.”
Forbes urges DoD leaders to rethink their approach.
“There is little likelihood that a system grounded in current healthcare industry standards for sharing information can measure up either to the potential of available technology or the needs of warfighters,” the article concludes. “Before committing to the biggest investment in a new health record system in American history, congressional authorizers and appropriators ought to be asking the Pentagon whether it really understands what it is buying.”
