This appeared just a few days ago.
Cerner Surprises in Beating Epic for DoD EHR
JUL 30, 2015 7:15am ET
“I’m stunned,” says longtime vendor selection consultant Vince Ciotti of the Defense Department’s pick of Cerner Corp. to be the new electronic health records vendor for the Military Health System.
Ciotti had pegged a 90 percent probability of Epic Systems getting the deal, as the company has consistently beaten Cerner for large delivery system contracts in recent years. Further, a young Epic, through the huge contract it got with Kaiser Permanente more than a decade ago, has shown the ability to significantly ramp up and do a massive job. “Frankly, I think Epic would have been a wiser choice for us taxpayers.”
But it is the Cerner team led by government contractor and IT implementer Leidos as well as consultancy Accenture and dental software vendor Henry Schein that took the prize over the teams of IBM, Epic and Impact Advisors; and Hewlett-Packard, Computer Sciences Corp. and Allscripts.
Leidos, in its current status and in a previous life as part of SAIC, has extensive experience with current and previous defense EHR systems. With the Defense Department, politics and lobbying win contracts and Leidos knows how to lobby the government, Ciotti notes. Importantly, Cerner carried its weight with far superior sales and marketing teams than Epic, he adds.
Now comes the heavy work for the winners, and not just Cerner, as Leidos and Accenture have a lot of work ahead of them and could well make more money off the project than Cerner, Ciotti believes. Ciotti doesn’t want to come off as dumping on Cerner; it’s an impressive organization and certainly a top player in healthcare information technology. But the company has big challenges ahead.
Lots more coverage here and there is widespread coverage and commentary all over the web.
This article gives a feel for the scale of the project:
Will Cerner Sink or Swim Under Weight of DoD EHR Contract?
JUL 30, 2015 2:57pm ET
Now that Cerner’s suite of electronic health records will over the next decade power the Military Health System, the question arises on whether the vendor is up to the mammoth task.
The new EHR system—which is global in scope—will replace up to 50 legacy systems and cover more than 9.5 million Defense Department beneficiaries and the more than 200,000 providers that support them. The initial contract for work is valued at about $4.3 billion, with initial rollout of the system to eight test sites in the Pacific Northwest expected to start in late 2016, and the value of the entire contract could near $9 billion.
There will be a lot of pressure on Cerner to have all the people in place to fill its obligations, says Mike Mytych, a principal and vendor selection specialist at Health Information Consulting in Menomonee Falls, Wis. And, full DoD interoperability with the Department of Veterans Affairs and outside providers to transfer data and images using certified EHRs also will be challenging, as that is the expectation of this giant project, Mytych notes.
More here:
You have to wonder if you want Health IT services from Cerner or Accenture in the next year or so you might be at the end of a pretty long queue! This is a pretty big contract by any measure!
David.
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