At a Washingon D.C. event on Wednesday, IBM Corp. and Epic Systems announced a 17-person advisory group that will help advise the Department of Defense (DoD) through implementation if they win the $11 billion DoD EHR contract, Modern Healthcare reports. The assembled advisory group is comprised of executives, physicians and Epic clients from 12 organizations as follows:
– Ross Martin, MD. Vice President of Policy and Development, American Medical Informatics Association.
– Monte Brown, MD. Vice President of Administration and Associate Dean of Veterans Affairs, Duke Medicine (Durham, N.C.).
-Jeffrey Ferranti, MD. CIO and Vice President for Medical Informatics, Duke Medicine (Durham, N.C.).
– Gregory Moore, MD, PhD. Chief Emerging Technology & Informatics Officer, Geisinger Health System (Danville, Pa.).
– Nate Farley, DDS. Prosthodontist, Gundersen Health System (La Crosse, Wis.).
– Jim Best. Vice President of Integration Management, Mercy (Chesterfield, Mo.).
– Alice Stewart. Vice President of Clinical Systems, Mercy (Chesterfield, Mo.).
– Bruce Darrow, MD, PhD. CMIO and Vice President of Information Technology, Mount Sinai Health System (New York).
– Kristin Myers. Vice President of IT Clinical Transformation and Project Management Office, Mount Sinai Health System (New York).
-Stephen Lawless, MD. Vice President of Quality and Safety, Nemours (Jacksonville, Fla.).
– Gina Altieri. Vice President of Corporate Services, Nemours (Jacksonville, Fla.).
– Jim Noga. CIO and Vice President, Partners HealthCare (Boston).
– Bert Reese. CIO and Senior Vice President, Sentara Healthcare (Norfolk, Va.).
– Jonathan Manis. CIO and Senior Vice President, Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.).
– Edward Babakanian. CIO, University of California San Diego Health System.
– Daniel Barchi. CIO, Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital.
– Major William Lyles. Patient Champion for the Advisory Group, Former Army Special Forces Team Leader.
– Bruce Turkstra. Implementation Advisor for the Group, Former CIO of Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.).
Representatives from the group emphasized the event was not meant to be a pitch for the EHR contract.
The Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization project requires initial capability to be established in 2016. IBM’s managing partner of U.S. federal business, Andy Maner believes this aggrssive timetable requires the need for pre-award activity. As a result, IBM has already installed Epic’s foundation system, a starter configuration offered by Epic to new customers at a secure, IBM data center at the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory in West Virginia.
“What we wanted to do was have Epic running and have the opportunity to integrate and test, add new functionality, integrate other pieces of the big package so that there were no surprises. We just wanted to make sure we were getting ahead. Obviously Epic is live all over the country, but we wanted to be a step ahead in a DOD-hardened environment,” said Maner.
Maner alluded that the cost of the testing was “substantial.” Epic President Carl Dvorak also explained this pre-award activity will also help test the performance of an Epic system on a data center and network that meets the Defense Information Systems Agency guidelines for security. Testing on the Epic system has been ongoing since 11/14, according to an IBM spokesperson, FCW reports.
This is “all about increasing the odds of success. You can’t just say, ‘Here’s the software and good luck,’ ” Maner. We handed in our bid. Our bid’s done. What we’re talking about is a new way to operate in federal. We want to get ahead. This isn’t extra credit on a test. We believe we’re going to win, and we want to be successful,” Maner said.
With 9.7 million beneficiaries, including active duty, retirees and their dependents, DHMSM will replace and modernize the Military Health System (MHS) clinical systems. Members of the Epic customer community have been pioneers in medical record adoption and integration, and providing patients with online access to their records, providers and schedules.
They also lead the nation in exchanging patient records between care settings. Covering about 100 million patients, the Epic customer community exchanges over 2.2 million records a month with other EHRs, health information service providers (HISPs), health information exchanges (HIEs), and groups on the eHealth Exchange such as the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Defense (DoD), and the Social Security Administration (SSA).
The 10-year contract is projected to be awarded this summer.
