The U.S. Department of Defense will resume its EHR overhaul at military health facilities on the West Coast in 2019 after pausing the project for eight weeks beginning in January, according to FedScoop.
The DOD began the transition to its new Cerner EHR, MHS Genesis, at Fairchild Air Force Base outside Spokane, Wash., in February 2017. In October 2017 , it went live on its fourth and final pilot site, Tacoma, Wash.-based Madigan Army Medical Center. However, the launch didn't go as smoothly as the DOD hoped due to a number of technical and workflow issues. In the initial eight-week break, DOD and Cerner officials evaluated the four pilot implementations and "received a great deal of feedback and lessons learned."
The project was slated for a 2022 completion, and Stacy Cummings, who heads up the Program Executive Office-Defense Healthcare Management Systems, told FedScoop the project will keep that timeline.
"And while we still have a few challenging areas where we're working with the surgeons general, we've committed to making enhancements over the next year," she said, adding the DOD resolved or is in the process of resolving nearly 1,000 other concerns — 2,500 of which are enterprise "functional decisions that need to be made," and another 2,000 "are currently in work by the Leidos partnership that we've approved to have change, and we're in the process of making those changes."
According to Ms. Cummings, it will take the rest of 2018 to address the added concerns.
More articles on EHRs:
VA confirms: Without permanent leadership, it will push forward with EHR modernization
athenahealth posts $329.4 million revenue in Q1: 3 things to know
Cape Fear Valley Health to replace Cerner EHR with Epic system