New Top Doc Will Face a Bunkered MHS Bureaucracy

Now that Dr. Jonathan Woodson has been finally confirmed as assistant Defense secretary for health affairs -- the Defense Department's top doc -- he faces a real challenge in getting the leadership of the Military Heath System bureaucracy that is bunkered in at their HQ in Falls Church, Va., to do things his way, more than one congressional source told me.

In fact, one source told me the SESers at MHS, led by Dr. George Peach Taylor Jr., the former Air Force surgeon general who since September has run the place with the title "performing the duties of the assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs," have set things up so much to their liking that Woodson will have a tough time floating new ideas.

To take one example, Woodson considers development of a new electronic health record system to replace the current, much loathed AHLTA system as his top priority behind care of wounded soldiers.

Woodson told his confirmation hearing this August that he would work with the Defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics to examine alternatives for a new electronic health record and then quickly appoint a program manager to develop a new system.

But the permanent government at MHS already has its own plans for AHLTA all set, according to a series of briefing slides from a little noticed or publicized Industry Day last month. Army Col. DaCosta Barrow, program manager of the MHS Defense Health Information Management System program office -- which among other things, is responsible for AHLTA as well as battlefield medical information systems -- detailed more than 20 planned procurements through 2012 to beef up or improve AHLTA and the battlefield systems.

Methinks Woodson will have a time slowing down or stopping this acquisition train, let alone the activities of the MHS EHR Way Ahead Planning Office (EWAPO), headed by Navy Capt. Michael Weiner, which this August said it wanted to find a commercial EHR replacement for AHLTA.

One of the Industry Day briefs listed a mess of existing MHS contracts, including one contract with Dynamics Research Corp. for strategic communications, which gave me a real chuckle.

Since I did not receive any communications -- strategic or otherwise -- from MHS about the Industry Day, I can only assume the decision not to inform me was tactical.