Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Defense on Wednesday announced the long-awaited winner(s) of a major, $4.3 billion contract to overhaul the Military Health System's electronic health records system: Cerner, Leidos, and Accenture.
- Some industry observers expressed surprise that Epic Systems failed to win the bid.
- Pentagon officials also told reporters that the overall price tag of the modernization project, which will cover more than 50 hospitals and 600 clinics and must be interoperable with outside private sector systems, has come down considerably after the competitive bidding process. The price tag was initially expected to be about $11 billion over the overhaul project's 18-year lifecycle, but is now expected to be closer to $9 billion.
Dive Insight:
According to Healthcare IT News, the three finalists for the hotly-sought Defense Department contract were the teams of Epic and IBM; Allscripts, Computer Sciences Corp, and Hewlett-Packard; and the winning group, Cerner, Leidos, and Accenture.
"Market share was not a consideration," said DoD Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall in an interview with the publication. "We wanted minimum modifications."
With the bid won, Cerner and its partners have a formidable task ahead of them. The firms will have to make sure that the technology is interoperable with hospitals outside of the federal military health systems, since that's where the lion's share of military care occurs.
Cerner shares jumped more than 7% in after-hours trading on Wednesday on the news.