SAIC Wins More TRICARE Business
By
Bob Brewin
File this one under irony. Science Applications International Corp., the outfit that jeopardized the health care records of 4.9 million TRICARE beneficiaries when computer tapes containing the data were stolen from an employee's car, just received a sole-source contract to continue supporting the Defense Department core electronic health record system.
In 1988, SAIC won a $1 billion contract to develop the Composite Health Care System, rebranded in 2005 as the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application by William Winkenwerder, at the time the Pentagon's top doc.
Whatever its name, CHCS or AHLTA (which some military docs say really stands for Ah Hell, Let's Try Again), it seems destined to live forever.
Last week the Naval Medical Logistics Command tucked a sole source contract award into the cluttered Federal Business Opportunities digital closet for SAIC to continue to maintain CHCS.
As usual with these kinds of awards, the justification says only SAIC can do the job:
"SAIC continues in the sustainment role and is the only vendor capable of supporting functional and technical system changes due to their unique experience and familiarity with the system. SAIC will continue to provide engineering, logistics and sustainment support for CHCS, supporting over 9.4 million beneficiaries of the Military Health System TRICARE Program."
What is unusual is there is no time line and no value given for this extension, a rather glaring omission considering SAIC's poor stewardship of records.