The Military Health System may have finally decided to get rid of its electronic health record system called AHLTA, which military clinicians loath and what S. Ward Casscells, who served as the Defense Department top doc from 2007-2009, described as being "hard to learn and use, slow and often down". Officials are looking to replace the system with some (hopefully) easier to use commercial software.
In a Special Notice tucked away inside the FedBizOps digital closet on Aug. 12, MHS Tricare Management Activity said it wants to find commercial outfits capable of modernizing AHLTA.
The notice said MHS wants an "interoperable set of EHR capabilities automating health care in a continuum of care settings including: inpatient acute care, ambulatory care, intensive care, emergency department, expeditionary (wartime, peacekeeping, disaster relief, and humanitarian) and ambulatory surgery."
The agency also wants a system that will provide patient identity management, e-mail between patients and their clinicians, and share data with the Veterans Affairs Department and health care systems connected to the National Health Information Network.
Since the Defense Department operates 59 hospitals and 364 outpatient clinics worldwide, and has more than 9 million health care beneficiaries, this is the kind of announcement that should attract attention from a slew of commercial contractors, including Epic Systems (the EHR supplier to Kaiser Permanente, the largest private health care organization in the country), GE Healthcare, Siemens as well as Google and Microsoft.
If MHS goes for a pure commercial play, it might be able to modernize its EHR system for a price tag measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
But, and I fear this will happen, if MHS taps an inside-the-Beltway contractor to adapt commercial software to its needs, it could end up paying billions of dollars for software delivered late. Does this make me a cynic or a realist?
COMMENTS
What happened to using Vista for active duty so that we could share information as veterans transition.
Sandra Fitzgerald 08/17/10 02:39 pm ET
The DOD should consider switching to the Veteran Affairs VistA CPRS medical record system. It is easy to use, stable and would enable easier access of VA physicians to patient's active duty records.
James Ballinger MD 08/17/10 02:17 pm ET
Having been involed in the MHS health IT since 1997 I can only say this way past due. I hope they have a clinician directing the choice and the implementation of the new system.That is why it went astray.despite our warning .Now having to work with the end product ,one observation comes to mind "lots of data very little info" and Vista is not significantly better and some of the commercial systems are a tadd better.We know how to use free text and render it computable using Ontology And Natural Language Processing ,thus clinician can use what they have learned in medical school.
Will that ever come. All the technology is already operational
Leo
Leo E Cousineaau MD Col(Ret) 08/17/10 02:15 pm ET
The system we used at the VA was so much easier to access. All information I needed, from ER and inpatient, imaging, and the works (to include a picture of the patient) were on one easy to use screen.
I was surprised at how difficult AHLTA makes things and wonder why the DoD has not changed to the VA's system yet. It seems that information between the VA and DoD would be easily accessed and care more accurate with one system.
Yerry 08/17/10 12:48 pm ET
None of the "big boys" are currently listed on the Interested Vendors list..
Rob Curee 08/17/10 11:58 am ET
When will the MHS learn that every major system it attempts to deploy or has attempted to deploy never works as billed, never is delivered when it's supposed to be, and wastes hundreds of millions of the taxpayer's dollars?
dk 08/17/10 09:56 am ET
Given the high profile reporting on the cooperative initiative between VA and industry to evolve the VA electronic health record (VistA) via shared open source approach and the stated desire of DoD to develop an EHR that plays well with VA, why doesn't DoD embrace leveraging VA's already world class EHR? The combination of two of the largest departments in government and our two largest public health care sytems can provide a dramatic opportunity to develop an open source EHR that is not only good for taxpayers but which also can help jumpstart EHRs across the country.
Brenda Faker 08/17/10 07:22 am ET
Outstanding. AHLTA and the MC-4 are rubbish. Finely put a bullet in them.
As far as the beltway milspec mafia, Brewin is on the mark. The military requires a radical solution not something design by DHIMS. It can be done but not by the usual suspects.
jbloggs 08/16/10 07:30 pm ET
Did anyone look at the tab called "Interested Vendors List" in the notice to see who is being considered?
What's your take on those folks, Bob?
reader 08/16/10 02:43 pm ET