Critics warn of $11 billion Pentagon health records fiasco

As the Pentagon prepares the biggest federal IT contract announcement since Healthcare.gov, critics are warning of an even bigger fiasco, a record system that’s obsolete before it’s even finished.

They say the project to build a new electronic health record system, estimated to cost $11 billion over a decade, will bloat budgets while hurting the care of millions of service members because their doctors will be unable to smoothly and securely share their medical records across military, Veterans Administration and private health systems.

The technical challenges are vast. The contractor will have to rewire and connect hundreds of hospitals and clinics, serving 10 million service members from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Read the full article at Politico.