At long last, the winning vendors for the Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization (DHMSM) procurement effort have been named and they are Cerner, Leidos and Accenture. The group surprisingly beat out bids headed up by Allscripts and Epic.  

The three partnered in submitting a bid in which defense computing contractor Leidos will serve as the prime contractor and Accenture as the configuration specialist.

Originally valued at $11 billion, the contract is now worth $4.3 billion and could extend as long as 10 years. The winning companies now will be responsible for upgrading the disparate electronic medical records of 9.5 million active-duty service members and their families. The overhaul will affect 56 hospitals and hundreds of medical and dental clinics in 16 countries.

The project comes with a certain amount of controversy. There have been lots of questions in recent years about why the Defense Department couldn’t make its open-source VistA system work. And, the Government Accountability Office has put this modernization project on its list of high-risk government initiatives, noting that federal agencies have wasted billions on failed IT investments over the years.