After more than a year of planning, the Defense Department issues the final solicitation for a commercial software to replace its AHLTA program. The Pentagon expects to make a single award for the contract that could be worth $11 billion over its lifetime.
VA, which has been eyeing a replacement for its scheduling system long before the current scandal, plans to issue a final request for proposals by the end of next month and make an award by the end of the year.
After a failed attempt to build a shared system with VA, the Defense Department is in a hurry to replace its aging health IT system. DoD says the final product will be an off-the-shelf commercial solution with as few changes as possible.
A lack of standards is undermining a push for better electronic health records at the Health and Human Services Department. Linda Kohn, director of Health Care Issues at the Government Accountability Office, told In Depth with Francis Rose she is investigating how recent changes to the EHR strategy might expose program issues the department can fix later on.
Al Sloane program manager from the Department of Labor's benefits.gov site, and Atacan Donmez, senior director at eGlobal Tech, discuss this year's excellence in government awards. March 18, 2014
DoD opens its electronic medical records to VA claims processors for the first time. The goal is to shave days or weeks from the time it takes VA to decide disability claims for recently separated service members. But the launch of the system has had a few bugs.
HHS and CMS cyber officials tell House lawmakers the Affordable Care Act portal is meeting or exceeding industry best practices for information assurance.
Dave Bowen, the director of health care IT and chief information officer for DHA, said the business case for the three-month-old organization shows potential savings by eliminating duplicative systems, networks and applications.
Some blame procurement for HealthCare.gov's troubles, but the root of the problem with the government's health care website is a matter of pure project management.
Dr. Theresa Cullen, chief medical informatics officer at the Veterans Health Administration, leads the program that allows the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to share data to improve the quality of health care they provide.
In his first public comments since the portal launched, federal CIO Steve VanRoekel said agencies and contractors can learn from the problems the website encountered. He said many times big failures provide the opening for major changes.
In a special commentary, Federal News Radio's Tom Temin asks, where were the crowd-sourcing, cloud-computing, agile-developing, data-dot-goving, code-a-paloozing studs who have been swept into so many agencies by the Obama administration before the launch of HealthCare.gov?
At a recent health IT demonstration, the Veterans Affairs Department showcased nine different technologies that it hopes will change how it delivers health care. The agency is testing medical mobile apps on iPads with 1,000 severely injured veterans.
House Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees inserted a provision in the fiscal 2014 Defense Authorization Bill requiring DoD and VA to have an interoperable health record system by 2017. Agency officials say they already are and will continue to share health care data, but having one integrated, interoperable health care management system is no longer necessary.
Frank Kendall says many different factors played into the Pentagon's decision to go with a competitive bidding process to develop its integrated electronic health record system, instead of adopting VA's VistA program. He said DoD wants to ensure its system is interoperable not just with VA hospitals but with civilian health facilities as well. In addition, Kendall cited cultural differences between the two large agencies.