Defense Health Agency CIO: grappling with similar challenges, but extra complexity
Healthcare IT News | February 12, 2019
ORLANDO – At HIMSS19 on Tuesday, Pat Flanders, chief information officer of the Defense Health Agency, described the unique challenges of standardizing, modernizing and securing the sprawling and dizzyingly complex DHA. It's not just the size, scope and critical mission of the DHA – which supports the Military Health System in information and technology integration to deliver its own unique Quadruple Aim: increased readiness, better health, better care and lower cost – that make his job so important. It's the huge number of patients in the system: 19,721 inpatient admissions per week, Flanders said. As the DHA works to ensure the "right information is accessible to the right customers at the right time and in the right way," it faces many of the same challenges of private-sector providers. But also many that are specific to its unique situation. Flanders is working to drive standardization across the enterprise, helping boost performance and enable more centralized management. He's doing this through ambitious projects such as the Desktop to Datacenter, or D2D, program that is meant to streamline infrastructure service lines across the MHS.