Cerner Corp. announced Wednesday that the U.S. Army awarded it a contract for pathology department laboratory software. But Cerner and three others are vying for a much larger contract for an electronic health-record system across the Military Health System.
Cerner's catch, which it actually received in May, is a $16.3 million, five-year contract for its anatomical lab software system.
But the Defense Health Agency, a separate contracting authority, is still deciding which of three vendors will win the Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization project, or DHMSM, pronounced “dim sum.”
The 10-year contract calls for the purchase, installation and support of an off-the-shelf EHR that will replace a hodgepodge now used by the U.S. military at 56 hospitals and more than 300 clinics worldwide.
The total sticker price of DHMSM has been estimated at $11 billion. The Defense Department has said that estimate is much too high but acknowledges the price will be in the billions.
Cerner, Kansas City, Mo., along with Epic Systems, Verona, Wis., and Allscripts, Chicago, are the three EHR vendors vying for the contract.
A bid from EHR vendors DSS and MedSphere Systems, consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers and system integrator General Dynamics Information Systems, was rejected this year.
The Defense Department did not respond for requests for comment by deadline.
Cerner, which offers a comprehensive package of EHR modules for hospitals and ambulatory-care providers, was founded in 1979 as a developer of lab software systems.
But labs are complex and even a single lab department may have as many as six or seven major divisions, each with its own special information technology needs, said pathologist and veteran physician informaticist Dr. Raymond Aller of the University of Southern California.
“There is a certain, how do we say, party line or religion, that you should have all of your software from one vendor, so that it would be more easily integrated,” Aller said. “I don't believe lab systems are that difficult to integrate today. To sacrifice functionality to the objective of integration is not wise.”
