A Health Care Win for Our Active Duty and Retired Military Personnel
By Sergio Rodriguera Jr.
August 02, 2024
Those who serve and have served our nation in our armed forces require the best care. Furthermore, with today’s technological advances, they deserve better and more personalized health care.
They’ve absolutely earned the best care our nation can deliver them today, but able to adapt to innovations that will provide them the support they need in the future.
The Department of Defense (DoD) – and the Veterans Administration (VA) – had each for many decades been using different, legacy, and disconnected computer health records systems.
DoD and VA operate in silos and each, respectively, manage hundreds of separate DoD and VA heath care and medical treatment facilities. Due to bureaucratic and systemic challenges within existing agencies, it is difficult for critical information to be shared. Thus, a DoD medical treatment facility has difficulties sharing data with another DoD facility.
Now add in the challenge of sharing data to an external agency or VA facility. Moreover, sharing data with the private sector is nonexistent.
Trapped with their records – were our active and retired service members. When I retired from my 20 year service, the last 15 years of service as a Naval Reserve Officer, I was asked where my physical record was. My honest answer was I probably lost it in transit somewhere returning from a combat tour in Afghanistan.
The DoD and the VA are finally fixing this. Both are now going to be using the same ultra-modern system – the MHS GENESIS:
“MHS GENESIS provides a single health record for service members, veterans, and their families. MHS GENESIS was developed to replace a patchwork of legacy systems, enhance patient safety, standardize clinical practices, and give patients more digital access to their provider teams. It also replaces the TRICARE Online Patient Portal.”
The DoD implemented GENESIS first – and is now just about fully, successfully up and running:
“With approximately 194,000 active users, MHS GENESIS is now live at 100% of DOD garrison facilities, deployed to 138 parent military hospitals and clinics, and used at more than 3,600 DOD locations worldwide….
“(F)eedback from end users truly demonstrates the value of the platform.
“‘I like the real-time documentation of immunizations,’ said one end user in a survey response. ‘Previously, we would have to spend hours documenting after the event.’
“Another end user noted the significance of integration, saying, ‘I am excited about the outside records capability. This is a great win, as we don’t have to do extraneous tests for patients.’”
The Covid global pandemic offered new and different challenges. Which the new system deftly handled:
“The value of MHS GENESIS became apparent during the COVID-19 response….
“Although the pandemic meant a few pauses on the ground, DHA implemented COVID-19 specific configuration changes for MHS GENESIS ‘within hours on several occasions that provided senior military and civilian leaders with timely information on COVID-19 laboratory testing results and the health of our force and our beneficiaries,’ said former DHA Director Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Ronald Place, in his prepared testimony to the House Appropriations Committee on May 21, 2021.
“‘The same changes in our legacy systems took nearly four weeks to implement,’ Place noted.”
With the DoD successfully online, implementation has now begun at the VA.
Thus far, five of our nation’s eighty-four VA hospitals are online. The latest is North Chicago’s Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center:
“Lovell FHCC, a first-of-its-kind partnership between the Department of Veterans Affairs and the DOD, opened MHS GENESIS to providers and patients on March 9, 2024….
“‘The launch of the federal EHR at Lovell FHCC will help the DOD and the VA deliver on the promise made to those who serve our country to provide seamless care from their first day of active service to the transition to veteran status,’ said Dr. Lester Martínez-López, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.
“Martínez noted the importance of collaborating with the VA. ‘A joint electronic health records system demonstrates the power of technology to improve health care delivery, and we look forward to continued collaboration with our VA partners,’ Martínez said….
“The deployment of MHS GENESIS at the center ‘enables a continuum of care that will enhance our operations as we work to optimize health outcomes for those we serve,’ said Dr. Robert Buckley, Lovell FHCC’s director.
“‘The federal EHR will enhance care for all beneficiaries who walk through our doors, whether they are veterans, U.S Navy recruits, students, active-duty service members, their dependents, or retirees,’ Buckley said.”
And that’s the point: Seamless records-sharing – everywhere.
Which means better health care for our active and retired service members – everywhere.
Which is exactly what they deserve.