The U.S. Department of Defense is moving forward in its purchase of a new electronic health record system, inviting vendors via a solicitation to come to the Washington, D.C.-area and demonstrate their products.
The solicitation, published Oct. 1, specifies that DoD is interested in "off the shelf" enterprise EHRs, including VistA solutions to replace its legacy systems. It defines enterprise EHRs as "those product[s] or system[s] which provide a patient-centric, point-of-care system for use by clinicians and clinical staff throughout a patient's lifetime healthcare experience."
In addition, the solicitation says, DoD is "interested in learning about product[s] that address all patient needs and include EHRS management, patient care plan, decision support, order management, medication, workflow, and documentation management which are positioned to support clinicians in all care environments to include outpatient, inpatient, emergency, intensive, specialty [e.g. OB/GYN, pediatrics, surgical and medicine specialties and subspecialties] and disconnected or remote care."
DoD also is interested in whether the EHR has been recognized by a third party commercial research firm, such as KLAS; has been certified under the Meaningful Use program; has attained at least Stage 1 of the program; possesses substantial market share; and/or has been recognized by third parties as "easy to learn, adopt, use and maintain."
The solicitation specifies that the demonstrations are for DoD's market research and planning purposes. The demonstrations will take place the week of Oct. 21.
DoD and the Veteran's Administration (VA) have been under the gun to integrate their EHRs; in February they abandoned a plan to build a joint system from scratch.
To learn more:
- here's the solicitation