DOD raises Cerner's data hosting contract to $74M

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The Department of Defense has increased the value of the contract modification awarded to Leidos, Cerner and Accenture to host the DOD's EHR in Cerner's own data centers to $73.7 million, up from the original $50.7 million add-on, reports FCW.

The sole-source add-on contract modification announced in December modified the Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization contract the team was awarded in July 2015 to overhaul the agency's electronic record system. It permits the data to be stored in Cerner's data centers instead of the government's data centers. The DHMSM issued the add-on contract modification because it said the system would not be fully operational if the data were stored in the government's data centers.

"While [the] Leidos solution meets the contract requirements, many of the capabilities of the DHMSM EHR cannot be fully realized unless they are hosted in the Cerner environment," read the December contract notice. "In order to fully enable these functionalities, the DHMSM EHR requires direct access to proprietary Cerner data, which is only available within Cerner-owned and operated data centers."

A DHMSM spokesperson said in a press call the price of Cerner hosting data is "significantly higher" than originally estimated, but it is still within 10 percent of what it would have cost for the government to host the data, reports FCW.

The contract modification only lasts through the fourth quarter of 2017, according to FCW.

The DHMSM spokesperson said having Cerner host data during the initial operating phase will allow the agency to look at functionality. "What makes sense to use right now may not make sense to us in a couple of years," the spokesperson said, according to the report. "We feel very secure, this is absolutely the best solution for us now."

The contract modification does not increase the original DHMSM contract's $4.3 billion ceiling value, according to the report.

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