Government Accountability Office (GAO)
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Experts Warn Of Antimicrobial Resistance, Additional Threats To National Biosecurity
Dr. Asha George...was among a panel of experts testifying about the state of U.S. preparedness for biological attacks and infectious disease pandemics. The experts agreed that a range of factors affect our country's ability to fight these threats, including weakened or fragmented federal oversight, limited incentives for research and development, and a lack of preparedness at the local level to protect vulnerable populations. "In short, the nation is not prepared for biological outbreaks, acts of bioterrorism, biological warfare of accidental releases with catastrophic consequences," George said. "We are talking about catastrophic events that affect the function of our entire society."
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Having Already Failed Once, DoD Snubs Open Source For Second EMR Try
In theory, the VA now has everything it needs to standardize and upgrade the open source VistA EMR, especially after forming the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) organization. But when it comes to bringing that expertise to the DoD’s EMR projects, it seems OSEHRA alone can’t do the trick. Read More »
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Who's To Blame When IT Systems Fail?
When it comes to government technology, assigning responsibility can be tricky. Read More »
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5 Problematic HIT Projects Costing The Government Billions
Cost overruns and missed deadlines for several federal agency health technology projects are costing the government "billions of dollars," according to a Government Accountability Office report focusing on the inefficiency of agency IT initiatives published Thursday. Read More »
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Agencies Aren't Honest About Tech Spending And Risks, Auditor Says
Better information technology management could save taxpayers $10 billion within five years, the government's top technology auditor told lawmakers Tuesday. But getting there will require agencies to be more open about what they're spending on IT and what they're actually getting for that investment. Read More »
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Agencies Under The Gun To Meet Data Transparency Deadlines
The Obama administration has six months to prove its implementation of a sweeping new data transparency law is on track...
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All Parties Ignore the One Way to Reduce Health Care Costs: Single-Payer
...business managers are the decisionmakers about computer purchases in most hospitals and large practices, and they're choosing off-the-shelf software that gives priority to maximizing billings and addressing management's needs. As our studies show, these management-led systems have increased health costs...
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An Overview Of The "Patent Trolls" Debate
Congress has recently demonstrated significant ongoing interest in litigation by “patent assertion entities” (PAEs), which are colloquially known as “patent trolls” and sometimes referred to as “non-practicing entities” (NPEs)... Read More »
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Auditor Finds $300 Million In Duplicative IT Systems At 3 Agencies
A dozen duplicative information technology systems at three federal agencies have cost the government more than $300 million during the past five years, an auditor announced Thursday. Read More »
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Better IT, More Efficiencies Needed At Joint VA/DOD Health Centers, GAO Finds
There are several barriers to healthcare collaboration between the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense, especially in the area of health IT, a Government Accountability Office report has found (PDF). Read More »
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Beyond the theatrics of the VA wait-list scandal
The spin cycle of a Washington scandal, once set in motion, is more entertaining to watch than clothes washing at the local laundromat, even though the latter is better at cleaning up a mess. Read More »
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Bid Protests: Useful Tool Or Abusive Practice?
The bid protest that has put a temporary halt to NASA’s plans to move from a proprietary content management system to open source architecture is just the latest example of how procurement disputes can delay agency initiatives for months. Read More »
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Biodefense Takes Center Stage at House Oversight Hearing
Is the nation ready to defend against antibiotic-resistant diseases or bioterrorism? What would the response to a biological attack or disease pandemic look like? Those threats and the collaboration of private, federal and local agencies to respond to them were the focus of a hearing Wednesday in the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security on biodefense preparedness. Congressman Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said at the beginning of the hearing that around 2.4 million people could die in high-income countries between 2015 and 2050 without an effort to contain antimicrobial resistance, according to an April report to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
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Chuck Hagel and the Secret War Over DOD & VA Electronic Health Records
...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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Combat EHR System Cost Soars By 2,233 Percent
The Defense Health Agency's electronic health record for combat troops--costing 2,233 percent more than originally estimated--topped the list of Defense information systems projects gone off track in a report from the Government Accountability Office. Cost for the system, the Theater Medical Information Program - Joint (TMIP-J), Increment 2, soared from $67.7 million in November 2002 to $1.58 billion by December 2013.
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