A new contract of the US Department of Defense's (DoD) to build an electronic health record (EHR) for the Military Health System will be having some major implications for physicians of all stripes.

It has been said that the contract was awarded yesterday to a consortium that includes Cerner Corporation, Leidos, and Accenture Federal. The contract will cover military facilities here and abroad, and will also affect nearly 9.5 million DoD beneficiaries and over 205,000 providers who deliver their care.

The DoD contract that has been valued at $4.3 billion in its first two-year includes options for two additional three-year contracts and a two-year award term. Officials reported that the work on the project is supposed to get completed by 2025.

The DoD’s new estimates the long-term value of the contract at less than $9 billion, said Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics.
Over the next decade, the new system will affect not only military hospitals and physicians, but also the many civilian physicians who care for active and retired military personnel and their dependents.

The DoD contract specifies that the Cerner EHR must be interoperable with other EHRs that are used in private-sector hospitals and clinics. Michelle Holmes, a Seattle-based principal of ECG Management Consultants, said in a statement that DoD’s insistence on interoperability could have a major impact in the long run. In near further it can also help to advance things a little faster than they've been chugging along.

The DoD stated that the new system will be used in its 55 hospitals and more than 600 clinics. Following field testing, Cerner, Leidos, and Accenture are scheduled to implement the EHR at eight locations in the Pacific Northwest by the end of 2016.