Gwen Elam, administrative officer for medical readiness service line and physical performance service line at the General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital, is a super user for MHS GENESIS—which provides a single electronic health record for service members—in-processes trainees at the Combined Troop Medical Clinic on Fort Leonard Wood April 24 for GLWACH’s Go-Live with the new system (Photo by: Chad Ashe, Gen. Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital).
As is the case with any new technology adoption, it will take time for clinic staff at each MTF command to learn how to efficiently navigate the new system. This may cause a temporary increase in routine wait times and a temporary reduction in available daily appointments. With each successive deployment, sites have been seeing faster returns to normal operations.
"The goal for MHS GENESIS is to consolidate health information into single platform and provide a continuum of care from point of injury to definitive treatment at any military treatment facility worldwide," added Army Col. Garrick Cramer, Commander Munson Army Health Center at Fort. Leavenworth in Kansas. "MHS GENESIS will greatly increase efficiencies for both beneficiaries and healthcare professionals through a DOD-wide, unified system that will also continue into the Veterans Affairs medical care system."
With the addition of the U.S. Coast Guard and the VA, this new EHR system has now been established as a federal program spanning three different departments - Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.
"I'm very pleased with the hard work that each hospital and clinic has made leading up to our MHS GENESIS Wave CARSON+ Go-Live," stated Army Maj. Gen. George Appenzeller, MHS EHR functional champion.
"Our success in transitioning to MHS GENESIS is only because of the time and effort that users of the system have put into understanding and improving this new electronic health record system and the benefits it brings to our patients, our staff and the Military Health System," Appenzeller added. "As our deployment teams wrap up activities and Wave CARSON+, I'm excited to see how we can continue building off our lessons learned to continue making future improvements to our deployment strategy."
This fall, Wave TRIPLER in Hawaii will go live.