Medical ADP Systems: Defense's Tools and Methodology for Managing CHCS Performance Need Strengthening (Letter Report, 07/15/94, GAO/AIMD-94-61). The Composite Health Care System, an automated medical information system being developed by the Defense Department (DOD), is intended to be the backbone for the military's worldwide medical operations. It is designed to provide medical personnel with instant access to patient information, from medical history to current treatments or vital statistics. As such, the system's performance and response times will be critical. DOD, however, is placing the performance of the system at risk because it has not provided adequate performance measurement and analysis tools or corrected weaknesses in its performance management methodology. Without appropriate performance measurement and analysis tools, DOD cannot diagnose causes of response-time problems or project how workload growth and configuration upgrades will affect system response times. Moreover, DOD's decision not to focus on routine analysis and elimination of extremely long response times can discourage system use. The lack of reliable methodology to plan for reserve capacity has also led to the unnecessary purchase of excess computer processing power. Unless these problems are corrected, DOD risks continuing to replicate and proliferate system performance problems and adding to the costs of deploying the system. --------------------------- Indexing Terms ----------------------------- REPORTNUM: AIMD-94-61 TITLE: Medical ADP Systems: Defense's Tools and Methodology for Managing CHCS Performance Need Strengthening DATE: 07/15/94 SUBJECT: Medical information systems Information systems analysis Health services administration Medical records Computerized information systems Military cost control Health care cost control Military hospitals Quality assurance Information resources management IDENTIFIER: DOD Composite Health Care System CHCS CHCS Performance Management Plan ************************************************************************ We regret that the full text of this item is presently unavailable. See the GAO FAQ - Section 2.0 for printed copy ordering information. The FAQ is automatically retrieved with all WAIS search results or can be obtained by sending e-mail to: [email protected]