“MHS GENESIS is now live!” proclaimed Navy Captain Reg Ewing, commander of the Naval Medical Center Camp LejeuneNaval Medical Center Camp Lejeune webpage in North Carolina, on Saturday, March 19.
And with that 14 new military hospital and clinic commands across Waves BRAGG and HOOD deployed MHS GENESIS, the new federal electronic health record.
MHS GENESIS replaces several Department of Defense legacy health care systems supporting the availability of electronic health records at 66 military hospital and clinic commands across the United States.
The latest waves added hospitals and clinics at Ft. Bragg, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, Second Dental Battalion, Ft. Hood, Ft. Sill, Ft. Polk, Barksdale AB, Little Rock AFB, Tinker AFB, Altus AFB, Vance AFB, and Naval Air Station Belle Chase.
This new electronic health record will integrate beneficiary data to healthcare teams across the DOD, Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security’ U.S. Coast Guard, as all are using the same system.
Army Col. Aristotle Vaseliades, hospital commander at the Bayne-Jones Army Community Hospital at Fort Polk in Louisiana, explained that the full transition will take some time as BJACH staff and providers learn new workflows.
“On Saturday morning a mother in labor arrived at our Labor, Delivery and Postpartum department, we had a patient in our mixed medical surgical department and normal weekend trauma and emergencies gave our staff the opportunity to use the system live in real time,” he said. “As we prepared for “go live” we also invited patients to come through our outpatient clinics. We had patients arrive at different departments for periodic health assessments, knee pain, immunizations, pharmacy and lab work. It went pretty smoothly minus a few bumps in the road which our information management department immediately fixed.”
At the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood in Texas, Arrington, clinical workflow analyst, added her take on the new system. “[MHS] GENESIS is putting every system together, and staff members will not have to switch between multiple programs, which will make it easy for hospital staff to serve our beneficiaries better.”
Army Col. Christopher Jarvis, Womack Army Medical Center commander, noted the hard work and dedication it took to get WAMC ready to deploy.
“We trained over 4,000 users within the hospital, outlying clinics, and operational forces over a five- month period. We received millions of dollars of new equipment--enough to fill up a warehouse--and issued it to thousands of users across Fort Bragg,” Jarvis said. “The training of personnel and administration of new equipment alone, required thousands of manpower hours and an inordinate amount of coordination and resources.”
Army Lt. Col. Daniel Cash, deputy commander for clinical services at BJACH, explained how rebuilding patient records is the biggest challenge in the deployment of MHS GENESIS.
“Not all information from the legacy systems is pulled over into MHS GENESIS so we are updating medical records at each patient’s initial visit post ‘go live’,” he said. “Patients and beneficiaries should come to their first appointments prepared to give a little historical background on their medical history in order to populate the new system.”
MHS GENESIS enables the application of standardized workflows, integrated healthcare delivery, and data standards for the improved and secure electronic exchange of medical and patient data.
By the end of next year, MHS GENESIS will be deployed across the entire enterprise providing for all 9.6 million beneficiaries.
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