According to a news report in The New York Times, the Chicago-based Allscripts has lodged a formal complaint with the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation over that health system’s awarding of an EHR implementation contract to the Verona, Wis.-based Epic Systems Corporation, instead of to Allscripts.

Last month, Allscripts lots its bid to implement an EHR across New York City’s public health system, which encompasses 11 public hospitals 70 clinics, and thousands of doctors, and serves more than one million patients. According to the Times report, Allscripts claimed that when all ancillary costs were included, its system would be more than $700 million less expensive to implement than would the Epic system. “If you’re going to spend that much money, just tell me why,” Glen Tullman, Allscripts’ CEO, told the Times. Allscripts has field a complaint with a procurement review board within the Health and Hospitals Corporation. But Alan Aviles, president of the corporation, told the Times that Allscripts’ cost analysis was, in the words of the Times, “false and unrealistic.” Aviles further told the newspaper that the organization’s decision had been validated recently by governance turmoil within the software corporation.

The entire New York Times report can be accessed here.