“The Defense Health Agency has progressed over the past year toward consolidation of its health IT assets and operationalizing a number of technology initiatives. These successes came with much planning and effort across DHA and its partners. With modernization, centralization, interoperability, cybersecurity and several over topics taking center stage in DHA’s activities and goals this year, the agency had a lot of its plate, but also hit new milestones along the way.”
Rolling Out MHS Genesis
“MSH Genesis — DHA’s new electronic health record (EHR) system — has been one of the agency’s biggest IT projects this year.”
“MHS Genesis runs on Cerner Millennium, a commercial platform that will enable DHA to keep its EHRs agile and up-to-speed with emerging technologies, DHA CIO Pat Flanders said in an interview with GovernmentCIO Media & Research…”
“Upon the Travis Wave deployment, current DHMS PEO Bill Tinston said the MHS Genesis pilot helped prepare for certain challenges, such as making sure that medical treatment facilities had the IT infrastructure to support the EHR. Tinston looked forward to the next wave in 2020, Wave Nellis, which would be the last single wave before moving toward stacked waves to meet the 2023 goal of completing all 23 waves…”
Interoperability With Veterans Affairs
“With Tinston’s positive report of MHS Genesis’ deployment with Wave Travis and the upcoming Wave Nellis, the EHR interoperability cooperation between the Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs has also shown growth this past year.”
“At DHA Industry Day in November, Tinston said in an interview with GovernmentCIO Media & Research that it has been increasingly important to regularly meet and work with VA leadership counterparts as they build out and deploy their EHRs to ensure that they are in sync in their practices, infrastructure and security…”
Transition of Medical Treatment Facilities to DHA
“This year also marked a milestone for DHA’s acquisition of the Army, Navy and Air Force medical treatment facilities Oct. 1.”
“The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act mandated DHA become responsible for all those facilities in terms of their budget, IT, administration, management, policies and procedures. In total, DHA was to adopt DOD’s 51 hospitals, 381 occupational health and ambulatory care clinics, and 248 dental facilities.”
“Starting in October, DHA began a four-part process to a two-year transition…” Read the full article here.
Source: DHA Sees Year of Progress with MHS Genesis, Interoperability – By Melissa Harris, December 31, 2019. GovernmentCIO.
