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FORT SILL, Oklahoma -- Reynold’s Army Health Clinic plans to launch the Military Health System (MHS) GENESIS, a new electronic health record (EHR) and patient portal, March 19, 2022.
The Department of Defense’s new EHR system known as MHS GENESIS allows patients to have full access to all medical their records under one system. All branches of service will have complete access to their medical records.
MHS GENESIS will replace TRICARE Online and secure messaging at the facility. The new EHR provides doctors enhanced, secure technology to manage a patient’s health information. When fully deployed, MHS GENESIS will be the single health record for service members, veterans and their families.
“We have been training to change over to MHS GENESIS since last July and we started our information campaign internally almost 18 months ago,” said Joel McFarland, public affairs officer, Reynold Army Health Clinic. “As Reynolds adjusts to the new system, appointment availability for all clinics from March until June 2022 will be reduced by half. Appointment wait times will increase as our staff adjusts to new technology and workflows.”
According to McFarland, the message they want to get to all patients is that they will start to see the changes March 16 because the call center will no longer be able to take messages for the care teams after that.
“We will cut those off three days prior so the call center will still be active, but you won’t be able to leave a message with your care team after close-of-business March 15. The changeover will occur March 19, which is a Saturday, so the only thing it will affect is the urgent care clinics,” said McFarland. “The hard opening will come March 21, which is when our patients can expect things to slow down.”
Staff Sgt. Stephanie Fontenot is the site point of contact for the MHS GENESIS system and said the new system will be great for staff and patients. However, she said it will be obvious the deployment of MHS GENESIS will slow down the appointments and wait times in the clinics.
“We’re going to have an integration period and we’ll have to figure out how it will affect our workflows. Going off other locations that have already deployed [MHS GENESIS], it will take around three to six months. We just ask our patients to be patient with us.”
McFarland said military health professionals understand.
“The main message to our patients is this is coming, and they will need to be aware and know how they are going to log in — either with a Common Access Card (CAC) or login,” he said. “We have all the information on the Reynolds webpage — including a QR code you can scan to get all the information.”
MHS GENESIS Patient Portal
Along with the new EHR, the MHS GENESIS Patient Portal is a secure website available 24/7 that gives you access to your health information. The secure website has around-the-clock access to individual and family health information including visit notes, test results, scheduling appointments and online prescription renewal. The MHS GENESIS Patient Portal replaces the TRICARE Online Secure Patient Portal.
“You can do all the same things on the MHS GENESIS Patient Portal that you could on the TRICARE Online Secure Patient Portal,” said McFarland.
According to Lt. Col. Megan McKinnon, deputy commander for clinic services, it is a safer system, and it communicates better with other systems over the long term. The hard part will be getting all the information into the system in a timely manner.
“But we are actively working it,” said McKinnon. “Hiring actions take months, so it’s not a quick return on that. We hope our beneficiaries understand and have patience and continue to let us know where we have problems.”
“It is going to change how our health facility operates, for the better,” she said. “I know the first couple of months will probably be a struggle because it’s new and not a lot of us are familiar with it. Once we get into the routine, I definitely foresee it making the workflow of our clinic better for everyone involved — our patients and us as a clinic.”
MHS GENESIS has already deployed to DoD hospitals and clinics beginning in 2017 and the program will be fully integrated across all military hospitals and clinics by 2024.
For more information on the MHS GENESIS rollout and the impact for patients, visit: https://www.health.mil/Military-Health-Topics/MHS-Transformation/MHS-GENESIS
| Date Taken: | 03.14.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 03.14.2022 17:35 |
| Story ID: | 416463 |
| Location: | FORT SILL, OKLAHOMA, US |
| Web Views: | 228 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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