AHLTA's End (Sort Of) Explained

I reported on Monday the Military Health System decided to consider commercial software for its loathed AHLTA electronic health record system. The folks over at MHS told me the planning process started in December 2009, with establishment of an EHR Way Ahead Planning Office this February.

For those into wiring diagrams and org charts, the EHR Way Ahead Planning Office (EWAPO, right?) resides within the MHS Joint Medical Information Systems Program Executive Office under the Office of the Chief Information Officer.

Mary Ann Rockey, acting MHS CIO (she's acting because Chuck Campbell, the CIO, has been dispatched to the "in limbo" ASD/NII, an organization slated for whatever lies beyond limbo) told me in an e-mail EWAPO was stood up "to look into the options available for the future of the military's electronic health record."

Rockey said after running EHR possibilities through a bureaucratic mill that included the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System; the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Process (are you still with me?); and the Defense Acquisition System Milestone Decision Authority, MHS has finally arrived at an EWAPO bottom line.

The new MHS HER, Rockey said, "is anticipated to address DoD and national interoperability objectives (including Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record and Nationwide Health Information Network data sharing initiatives); modernize the EHR family of applications; enhance usability; improve clinical decision support; empower

patients through access to personal health record solutions; and increase

system performance and data availability through network modernization."

This all sounds good, if rather general, but how MHS will get from here to there -- and at what cost -- is probably at least a billion-dollar question.

And I keep getting told the answer is to use commercial off-the-shelf software from Epic Systems.