Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Ehr Procurement topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
DPH shifts strategy on unified EHR: shared UCSF model deemed infeasible; RFP launched
Summary
After eight months of joint due diligence, DPH concluded a single shared EHR with UCSF is not feasible due to cost and operational constraints; the department will issue a competitive RFP to procure a unified EHR, with a revised timeline that pushes broad implementation into 20182019.
The Department of Public Health reported that after roughly eight months of joint due diligence with UCSF, the previously considered shared, single-system electronic health record model proved infeasible because of projected costs and operational burdens. IT leadership said the 10-year total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) model for the shared approach came back approximately $70 million to $100 million above earlier estimates and that union and civil-service staffing constraints would have produced double-counted costs.
As a result, DPH announced it will pursue a competitive request for proposals (RFP), with final RFP documents submitted to contracting and legal and a public release expected in December 2016. Staff estimated the RFP and procurement stages will take approximately six to seven months, with contracting and implementation phases extending into 2018; stabilization and training were projected into 2019. The department said it has secured a verbal contract extension with its current EHR vendor to mid-2020 to reduce schedule risk.
IT director Mister Kim briefed commissioners on program-management preparations the department is undertaking during the procurement window: a staffing plan and backfill strategy, data-cleanup to eliminate duplicate medical records, organizational change-management and standardization of workflows using lean methodology. Staff emphasized the importance of building compatible data models so that DPH and UCSF systems can exchange data for clinical care and research even if they are not a single shared system.
Commissioners pressed staff on several points. Commissioner Pating asked whether the RFP process would preserve opportunities for collaborative or consortium purchases to leverage scale; staff said the RFP will be open to any vendor that meets minimum requirements and that DPH will evaluate vendor proposals for opportunities to leverage prebuilt, shared implementations where possible. Commissioner Singer asked about federal "meaningful use" timelines and penalties; IT staff said missed regulatory targets can produce financial penalties and that DPH had calculated potential penalty ranges but would provide a more detailed estimate to commissioners. CFO Greg Wagner said the departments multi-year budget projection remains on the right order of magnitude but final costs will depend on RFP results.
Staff committed to quarterly updates to the commission, a three-month implementation-status report on readiness items (PMO, staffing plan, organizational change management) and additional briefings on expected penalties and incremental extension costs for the current system.
The commission did not take a formal procurement vote today but recorded the decision to move forward with an open RFP process and to prepare the organization for phased implementation if a vendor is selected.
