Epic will not challenge the Coast Guard over its plan to deploy the same Cerner EHR as the Department of Defense, FCW reports.
The Coast Guard announced in early April it would join the DOD's contract with Cerner to implement its MHS Genesis system.The DOD has slowly been transitioning to the new EHR in a series of launches beginning February 2017. It expects to complete the rollout in 2022.
In 2010, the Coast Guard signed a deal with Epic to replace its legacy EHR across 176 sites for $14 million. The agency terminated the contact in 2015 after spending nearly $60 million on the effort, which it has nothing to show for. Since the failed rollout, Coast Guard physicians have been forced to use paper-based processes.
Epic blamed part of the failure on government contractor Liedos, according to FCW. The EHR giant claimed the system's storage area network had been corrupted and then accidentally wiped during implementation.
The Department of Veterans Affairs also intends to transition to Cerner, though the agency has been tied up in negotiations that have been complicated by leadership changes and interoperability concerns. Between VA and DOD, there may be as much as $15 billion in contract spending on Cerner over the next 10 years, FCW reports.
Epic didn't protest that either.
"We've never challenged anything," company founder and president Judy Faulkner said. "We don't do that. We feel it's the customer's right to pick whatever they want."
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