Electronic Health Records: Additional DOD Actions Could Improve Cost and Schedule Estimating for New System

The Department of Defense provides health care to millions of people. It uses multiple health record systems to manage patient health information—such as separate systems for inpatient and outpatient information.

DOD began to replace these separate systems with a comprehensive electronic health record system in 2017. However, DOD’s cost and schedule estimates for fully deploying this system are not reliable. For instance, DOD didn’t include enough details about its methodology or the data used for the cost estimate.

We recommended that DOD develop more reliable cost and schedule estimates for deploying this new system.

What GAO Found

The Department of Defense (DOD) began deploying Military Health System (MHS) GENESIS—a commercial electronic...