DOD EHR

See the following -

Barack Obama Puts Cronyism Above Cybersecurity

Michelle Malkin | michellemalkin.com | July 29, 2015

Just last week, the UCLA Health system run by Epic suffered a cyber attack affecting up to 4.5 million personal and medical records, including Social Security numbers, Medicare and health-plan identifiers, birthdays and physical addresses...The university’s top doctors and medical staff market their informatics expertise and consulting services to other Epic customers “to ensure the successful implementation and optimization of your Epic EHR.” Will they be sharing their experience having to mop up the post-cyber-attack mess involving their Epic infrastructure?...

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Chuck Hagel and the Secret War Over DOD & VA Electronic Health Records

Dan Vernon | FedScoop | August 12, 2014

...Today, the agencies are moving down separate modernization paths, with DOD working on its Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization program (DHMSM) and VA planning commercial acquisitions for the next generation of its Veterans Integrated System Technology Architecture, known as VistA. But analysts, including one of the founding developers of VistA, point to years of missed opportunities for DOD to leverage what many consider to be superior existing capabilities in VA’s VistA system — an ecosystem of modular application components that in most cases have become industry standards (VA’s troubled scheduling system notwithstanding)...

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DoD Healthcare Exec Pushes $11 Billion IT Upgrade, But Unwittingly Reveals Why It Won’t Work

Loren B. Thompson | Lexington Institute | April 8, 2015

On March 25, the program executive overseeing a proposed modernization of the military healthcare records system testified before the Senate’s defense appropriations subcommittee. Christopher A. Miller urged committee members to support a costly upgrade to the way in which the healthcare records of military personnel and their dependents are stored and shared — which at a projected price-tag of $11 billion will be the biggest investment in an electronic health record system ever undertaken. If past experience with such IT projects is any indication it will end up costing a lot more, but that’s not the real problem. The real problem, as Miller unwittingly revealed in his testimony, is an acquisition strategy that can’t deliver what the department needs... Read More »

EHR debacle leads to paper-based care for Coast Guard servicemembers

Darius Tahir | Politico | April 25, 2016

The botched implementation of an electronic health records system sent Coast Guard doctors scurrying to copy digital records onto paper last fall and has disrupted health care for 50,000 active troops and civilian members and their families. Five years after signing a $14 million contract with industry leader Epic Systems, the Coast Guard ended its relationship with the Wisconsin vendor, while recovering just more than $2.2 million from the company. But it couldn’t revert back to its old system, leaving its doctors reliant on paper.

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Google Joins VistA Team Proposing Open Source EHR for the Department of Defense

Google has thrown its hat into the EHR ring by joining the team led by PwC which is proposing that the Department of Defense (DoD) upgrade their current EHR to Defense Operational Readiness Health System (DORHS), a customized application built for the DoD and based on VistA, the open source EHR developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)...Google’s participation has enormous implications for both the DoD’s EHR and to the healthcare industry as a whole. By choosing the open source EHR team, Google...has sent a clear message to the world that VistA is the best option for the DoD.

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How the DOD's choice of EHR will impact providers

Heather Caspi | HelthcareDIVE | February 19, 2015

As the Department of Defense prepares to select a new electronic health record system, some are advocating that it go with an open-source solution—not just to benefit of the DOD but to use the $11-billion program to benefit the healthcare industry at large.

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IBM Releases Study Highlighting Success of OSEHRA Open Health Community Innovation

The IBM Center for The Business of Government is a successful advocate for the improvement of the effectiveness of government business that focuses on the future of operation and management. Recently, the center published a scholarly work comprised of case studies in healthcare entitled “Making Open Innovation Ecosystems Work.” It was written by a team of distinguished academics including Donald E. Wynn, Jr., Ph.D., Renee M.E. Pratt, Ph.D., and Randy V. Bradley, Ph.D., and OSEHRA was one of two cases chosen for analysis.

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Obama Nomine Makes her Case to Take Over Tech at VA

Adam Mazmanian | Adam Mazmanian | May 19, 2015

LaVerne H. Council, the private-sector IT consultant and former Fortune 50 CIO who is President Barack Obama's pick to take over the Office of Information and Technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs, told lawmakers May 5 how she planned to manage the VA's technology team and its $4.2 billion in annual tech spending. Read More »

Thomas Verbeck: Sharing Medical Data Saves Lives

Thomas J. Verbeck | fayobserver.com | July 19, 2015

As a former chief information officer with a long career in information technology, my focus has intensified since the Department of Defense announced plans to spend $11 billion on a new EHR system - one that can seamlessly exchange health data for the country's nearly 10 million employees, military personnel, retirees and their families. But the DoD's plan will fail. That's because most of today's EHR systems, including the bidder finalists, are designed only to work within their own system. That allows them to charge physicians and hospitals outside their system for access to your data. DoD can demand a system that seamlessly connects health data with civilian hospitals - or the VA - but it has failed to do so.

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U.S. Coast Guard Terminated Contract with Epic for EHR Implementation

Heather Landi | Healthcare Informatics | April 22, 2016

The U.S. Coast Guard has discontinued an Integrated Health Information System (IHiS) implementation project, which is an expansion of an electronic health record (EHR) implementation project as part of a contract awarded to Verona, Wis.-based Epic Systems in 2010, a USCG representative said. The Coast Guard is pursuing an alternative EHR system, and, in the interim, Coast Guard physicians are continuing to use paper-based records, "without interruption of service to members and dependents," the USCG spokesperson, Alana Ingram, public affairs officer, said...

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VistA Marketing Ramps Up in Advance of DoD EHR Award

Molly Bernhart Walker | FierceGovernmentIT | January 14, 2015

A marketing campaign aimed at raising the profile of the Veterans Affairs Department's open source electronic health record is in full swing. A non-profit group founded through a VA contract to advance the department's Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture has stood up a website, Twitter account and LinkedIn group to promote VistA. Read More »

We've been swindled

Paul Levy | Not Running a Hospital | June 24, 2015

...And the fraud is likely to be compounded.  The next step in the process is a forthcoming Department of Defense procurement of an EHR system to serve the military and its dependents, whether being treated at military healthcare facilities or other facilities in the communities in and around our bases and other military installations. As I understand, there is no language in this multi-billion dollar procurement that would require the vendor chosen to achieve interoperability with those EHRs in community facilities where the government will send its patients--or where they might end up for emergent care...

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Why DoD EHR Modernization Will Fail

Susan D. Hall | FierceHealthIT | April 10, 2015

As the U.S. Department of Defense zeroes in on determining which bidding group will be awarded the coveted contract to modernize its electronic health record system, Loren Thompson, COO at the nonprofit Lexington Institute, says the effort is doomed to fail. As evidence, he uses the words that Christopher A. Miller, the program executive overseeing the project, used in testimony before the Senate's defense appropriations subcommittee. Read More »