VA Awards $55 Million Contract For Surgical Workflow

IT firm Harris Corp. has won a five-year, $54.9 million contract from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to integrate a commercial surgical workflow management system into the VA's massive health IT infrastructure. The contract represents the first enterprise-wide award in the department's new strategy of acquiring commercial, off-the-shelf software to augment the powerful but aging Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA).

For the VA's Surgical Quality and Workflow Manager (SQWM) program, Harris will deploy a GE Healthcare Centricity surgical information system at all 130 VA hospitals that perform surgery. According to Melbourne, Fla.-based Harris, the technology will help reduce waiting times for surgeries, avoid cancellations, and boost patient throughput for the 6,000 surgeons who together perform 400,000 procedures annually at VA facilities...