By DAN MARGOLIES

The Defense Department has dropped one of the bidders on its 10-year, $11 billion contract to update its electronic health record system, Modern Healthcare reports.

The publication says the department eliminated PricewaterhouseCoopers and its bid partners from contention.

Still in the running, according to Modern Healthcare, are three teams, including an alliance formed by Kansas City-based Cerner, Leidos, Accenture and Intermountain Healthcare; another led by Cerner rival Epic Systems Corp. and IBM; and a partnership among Allscripts, Hewlett-Packard and Computer Sciences Corp.

Cerner spokesman Dan Smith confirmed in an email that the company is still in contention for the contract but said it would be inappropriate to comment further “due to the sensitive nature of the acquisition process.”

In September, Cerner announced it had entered a “strategic agreement” with Intermountain Healthcare, which operates hospitals and clinics in Utah and Idaho, “to meet the military’s specific research requirements to modernize its electronic health-record process.”

The winning bid is expected to be announced in June.

The military health system overseen by the Department of Defense serves 9.7 million people through more than 50 hospitals and hundreds of clinics. It is separate from the Veterans Health Administration, which is part of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

 

Dan Margolies is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.