Billions Wasted on Effort to Create Electronic Health-Records System

The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense spent at least $1.3 billion over the last four years to unsuccessfully develop a single electronic health-records system between the two departments, a News 21 investigation shows. Over the past 30 years, billions of dollars have been wasted, including $2 billion on a failed upgrade to the DOD's existing electronic health-records system. The National Defense Authorization Act for 2008 ordered that the two state departments develop a way to implement electronic health-record systems and in 2011, the departments decided the best solution would be to create a single electronic healthcare record together. But after two years, the departments canceled the plan with little explanation. Now, the two departments are upgrading their own systems and building software to share information with each other.

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