The U.S. Department of Defense and the Coast Guard are partnering to jointly roll out the same electronic health record, MHS Genesis, the agencies said Monday.

The Coast Guard will deploy MHS Genesis to its clinics and sick bays through a single inpatient and outpatient Cerner EHR.

[UPDATE: Coast Guard reveals more details about how it will adopt DoD's $4.3 billion EHR]

Having terminated a failed Epic EHR contract nearly three years ago, the Coast Guard has been operating with pen and paper ever since. The Coast Guard and State Department attempted to work together on the Epic project, but a long list of concerns forced the agencies to abort the rollout.

Epic, for its part, said it did everything it could, fulfilled terms of the agreement and the software was ready to go-live.  

Just last week, the State Department put out an RFI for a solo EHR project, which officials said it hopes will have shared services capabilities with other federal agency EHRs, like DoD and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

[Also: How the Coast Guard’s ugly, Epic EHR break-up played out]

Both the Government Accountability Office and Congress have berated the Coast Guard for its use of paper records, calling its program a “debacle” in January.

DoD is currently in a planned assessment stage for its Cerner EHR project, but the roll-out is scheduled to continue in late spring. And while former VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD was working on its own contract with Cerner to match the DoD, his removal from office puts that VA contract on hold indefinitely.

Twitter: @JessieFDavis
Email the writer: jessica.davis@himssmedia.com