Pentagon Kicks Off Procurement To Maintain Current Health Record Until 2018

The Defense Health Agency has kicked off a procurement to sustain the current Defense Department electronic health record system through the end of 2018, potentially pushing back deployment of a new military EHR until 2019.

That would be a decade after President Obama in 2009 called on the Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department to develop a joint EHR, an effort abandoned in February after estimated costs had spiraled to $28 billion.

If all options are exercised, DHA said, the planned contract could run for four years and nine months, beginning in March. It would sustain operation of the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application -- or AHLTA -- EHR; the Composite Health Care System, or CHCS, which manages clinician order entry; and the Clinical Data Repository, which contains 240 million health records.