“We have engaged government relations support to help educate legislators on what is happening with healthcare IT and in particular, on advancing EHRs and interoperability,” said an Epic’s spokesman.
In a recent July hearing, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) stated that Epic’s EHR were “closed records” asking “Is the government getting its money’s worth?” He also argued that HITECH act was intended to push interoperability. “It may be time for the (Energy and Commerce) committee to take a closer look at the practices of vendor companies in this space, given the possibility that fraud may be perpetrated on the American taxpayer.”
In an interview with Bradford Card, the CEO of Card & Associates stated, “there have been stories that they’re not interoperable when in fact they are.”
Epic and IBM recently partnered to compete for the Department of Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization (DHMSM) contract worth potentially $11 billion dollars. IBM and Epic will propose a solution to transform the MHS leveraging Epic’s high performance, interoperable and secure EHR software
