The Department of Defense rolled out its electronic health record system to 25 additional military installations in 12 states as part of the Wave Carson Plus deployment effort, Federal News Network reported Friday. DOD’s deployment of the Cerner-built MHS Genesis EHR system is about 33 percent complete with 42,000 active users.
“This was really a good experience for us to learn how to navigate those geographic challenges because it was the broadest geographic range we had done to date,” said Holly Joers, acting program executive officer for defense healthcare management systems.
“Coming out of that deployment, we’re able to look at how we can leverage virtual support as much as practical. We’re also using our ‘pay it forward’ campaign to get folks who actually use the system today to go forward to the new sites, so they can lend help to their peers to understand the nuances of using the system,” Joers added.
DOD will next field the EHR system at all military treatment facilities in Hawaii and expects those rollouts to conclude by the end of September. Joers said the department has begun preparation work for those deployment waves.
The Pentagon plans to conduct eight implementation waves in 2022 to install MHS Genesis at military health facilities at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland Air Force Base, Fort Hood and Fort Bliss in Texas; Fort Bragg in North Carolina; Eglin Air Force Base in Florida; Fort Gordon in Georgia; and Navy facilities in Jacksonville, Florida.
“We’re going out next week to kick off the Eglin Air Force Base and Jacksonville waves, and we start this process about 18 months out with a kickoff discussion with the commanders,” Joers said.
“While we may discover things that we can learn along the way, the process itself is standardized. We know what to expect; we know how to convey to the commander what to expect as part of the deployment and adoption. Those are the things that give us confidence that we can handle the stacked waves,” she added.
