House panel shifts most of Military Health System's IT budget

A House committee transferred most of the Military Health System's proposed fiscal 2010 information technology budget to the Defense secretary's office because none of the IT projects MHS has proposed during the past two years "have found their way into the president's budget request," said a report accompanying the Defense authorization bill, which was released on Monday.

In its report on the bill, the House Armed Services Committee said it shifted $1.1 billion, or 85 percent of the agency's total $1.3 billion IT budget, to the secretary's office because "a higher level of leadership oversight is required to ensure that existing problems with the department's health information management/information technology programs are addressed and to ensure better coordination among other department information technology efforts".""

The committee voted on June 17 to send the bill to the House floor.

The report language amounted to a vote of no confidence in the ability of MHS to manage its own IT affairs, particularly projects to develop a new electronic health record system compatible with a system operated by the Veterans Affairs Department, said a knowledgeable congressional staffer, who does not work for the committee.

The staffer said Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn would oversee MHS technology programs.

Moving the money to the secretary's office may be a way for Congress to find specific people in the Defense Department to hold accountable for IT development, an executive with a Defense contractor said. Congress may be thinking, "since the folks at MHS seem incapable of fixing the clearly identified MHS IT problems, and we can't seem to find anyone we can hold accountable within this organization, we are going to take their money and give it to someone whose name we do know and try to hold them accountable," the contractor said.

This April, President Obama called on Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department to develop a "unified lifetime electronic health record for members of our armed services that will contain their administrative and medical information -- from the day they first enlist to the day that they are laid to rest."

In August 2008, S. Ward Casscells, then assistant secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, estimated it would cost $15 billion to develop an electronic health record system to meet the requirements of both departments. MHS started work in September 2008 on an enterprise architecture for Defense and VA, which Charles Campbell, chief information officer at MHS, estimated would cost less than $1 billion.

In April, top MHS officials, including Tommy Morris, acting director of the Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Health Protection and Readiness Programs, presented plans for the new electronic health record system at a joint hearing of two House Armed Services subcommittees.

Morris told the hearing that the new electronic health record system would be developed using open standards, which would allow VA and the Indian Health Service to help build components of the system.

Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army's surgeon general, told the panel that while MHS may have developed a plan for a new system, it did not have a strategy that involves all three services.

MHS was supposed to provide the two subcommittees with a detailed plan for the electronic health record system. When it did not, the HASC decided to move control over to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a source said.

An MHS spokeswoman declined to comment, saying it was agency policy not to comment on legislation until it is passed.