On July 15, Naval Hospital Oak Harbor, which provides inpatient and outpatient care, along with labor and maternity services, went live with the MHS GENESIS electronic health record. Oak Harbor is the second site to come online as part of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)'s initial operating capability (IOC) program, and the go-live marks a significant milestone as the inpatient components of MHS GENESIS are now officially deployed.
The integrated system aggregates information into a single EHR, standardized across the branches of the military, to facilitate the safe transition of care across the spectrum of military operations to include garrison, theatre, and en route care. At its core, MHS GENESIS is the same commercially available, off-the-shelf electronic medical record that is deployed at thousands of facilities worldwide, operating on one code set.
Ultimately, this creates an integrated and longitudinal patient record and coordination across the continuum of care, regardless of environment, scope and size of military and dental treatment facilities. The ability to integrate and share interoperable patient information with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care enterprise and civilian health systems is critical and is inherently built into MHS GENESIS.
With the Oak Harbor go-live, a variety of MHS GENESIS applications and capabilities that will improve patient safety and clinical efficiency have been deployed for the first time. A few of these include:
- A single integrated record across ambulatory, acute and all other venues in the Oak Harbor medical enterprise
- Medical device interoperability via Cerner's CareAware medical device connectivity platform; at Oak Harbor medical device data is seamlessly integrating with the MHS GENESIS electronic medical record
- Advanced clinical decision-support capabilities
- Advanced specialty provider workflows and embedded clinical calculators
- Barcode medication administration
- A labor and maternity-specific module designed to create a new infant record upon barcode scan and treatment plans tailored to mother and child
The DoD's MHS GENESIS project encompasses the replacement of three existing EHRs to create a single patient record. It is interoperable with 24 legacy systems and offers improvements designed to save clinicians and patients time, eliminate paper and reduce potential medical errors and delays. It's also engineered to enable interoperability between the private and public sectors. MHS GENESIS is designed so that a record can follow a solider once they leave active military duty or if they visit a civilian health facility.
For more information about the MHS GENESIS program, read Travis' previous blog, On the Path to Improve Health Care for Those Who Serve.
