Military Health System Musical Chairs

They're busy rearranging the executive deck chairs at the Military Health System while the nomination of Dr. Jonathan Woodson to be the next assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs molders away in the Senate due to a hold by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

MHS put out a press release on Tuesday that in the absence of Woodson, Dr. Clifford L. Stanley, the Defense Department's undersecretary for personnel and readiness, named Dr. George Peach Taylor Jr., who served as Air Force surgeon general from 2002-2006, as the head guy at MHS, with the rather awkward title of "performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs."

Taylor, I'm told, has been hanging around MHS as an SESer for the past couple of months, and before that was managing director of Federal Government Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers and then did a stint as health care IT veep at Northrop Grumman, which until recently had the biggest chunk of the MHS IT portfolio. Taylor replaces Dr. Charles Rice, who will return to his position as president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

There's a lot more action, insiders told me.

Another MHS newcomer, George Chambers, has been named special assistant to the secretary of health affairs and head of EHR Way Ahead Planning Office (EWAPO), which among other things is supposed to come up with a new commercial electronic health record to replace the loathed AHLTA record system.

Chambers, and his key job, mystifies a lot of folks who track MHS, including those on the Hill. Chambers' LinkedIn bio says he serves in both the MHS job and as vice president of CPS International, which bills itself as the "preeminent provider of Information Systems Solutions and Consulting Services for the Health care community." The CPS website does not say where the company hangs its hat.

Hmmm . . . does this mean an outside "adviser" will now drive development of the next generation military electronic health record? Or, does Chambers have his SES pips, as some folks speculate?

Whatever his status, Chambers has a vast portfolio within MHS. This October, I'm told, he will run the Defense Health Information Management System -- a job currently held by Army Col. Claude Hines -- portal development, critical fixes, distributed development and everything else but raising and lowering the flag at MHS headquarters.

There's other key personnel changes afoot at MHS that I can't write about at the moment, but purpose of the exercise, I'm told, is to burrow in before a new boss is confirmed.