“The U.S. Government Accountability Office has denied Nuance Communications’ protest of the Veterans Affairs Department’s $19 million task order awarded to Cerner Corp. to develop clinical documentation improvement tools.”
“Nuance, which currently provides the VA with tools for health information coding under a contract that expires this year, in October filed a protest arguing that awarding the task order to Cerner denied Nuance the opportunity to submit proposals for the services, and should have been subject to a separate competition.”
“But the GAO determined the task order is within the scope of the VA’s underlying contract with Cerner, a $10 billion deal to overhaul the agency’s electronic health record system…”
“Nuance isn’t the first company to raise concerns over the VA’s work with Cerner.”
“In 2017, EHR vendor CliniComp sued the VA for allegedly improperly awarding a no-bid contract to the company for the agency’s EHR overhaul, arguing that the VA failed to conduct a competitive bidding process. A federal appeals court ultimately tossed CliniComp’s challenge, after ruling CliniComp had failed to show that it could have successfully competed for the contract…” Read the full article here.
Source: GAO rejects protest over VA’s $19 million Cerner task order – By Jessica Kim Cohen, January 30, 2020. Modern Healthcare.
