The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to adopt the Defense Department’s electronic medical records system, known as Military Health System Genesis, as early as next summer, according to the federal agency that oversees the agency’s implementation of Oracle Cerner software.
The move was first announced by Laura Prietula, deputy chief information officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Electronic Health Records Integration Office, who said during October 25 FCW the event what Modernization of the federal electronic medical record office — or FEHRM — “worked with NOAA” to have them join Oracle’s integrated Cerner EHR platform.
The FEHRM office is charged with overseeing the implementation of an integrated EHR system across VA, DOD, and the US Coast Guard. All three federal agencies are implementing EHR software from Oracle Cerner to simplify access to health records for service members and veterans, though the DoD and Coast Guard use a version known as MHS Genesis and the VA uses a version known as Millennium.
Corey Hughes, spokeswoman for FEHRM, said Nextgov that the office “coordinated efforts after a thorough functional analysis to bring NOAA providers/clinicians to the single common federal EMF currently used by Virginia, the Department of Defense, and the US Coast Guard.”
“For NOAA, our Leidos for Defense Health partnership will implement MHS GENESIS as a standard package,” Hughes added.
Although NOAA has about 12,000 employees across the US, it also supports a Officer corps this includes officers who “pilot NOAA ships, fly aircraft, manage research projects, conduct diving operations, and serve in full-time positions throughout NOAA.”
This was reported by NOAA press secretary Kate Silverstein Nextgov that “The agency’s Office of Naval and Air Operations will use the Department of Defense’s MHS Genesis electronic medical records system to manage the records of NOAA’s officer corps.”
“The system meets security requirements for the medical records of NOAA uniformed service members and integrates with the medical care system used by all uniformed officers,” Silverstein added.
While NOAA said there is “no timeline for implementation at this point,” FEHRM said NOAA’s “deployment is scheduled for summer 2023.”
Both EHR systems—MHS Genesis and Millennium—were developed and are maintained by Cerner, which was acquired by Oracle in June. The Department of Defense has begun work on the MHS Genesis platform in 2015and the Coast Guard announced in 2018 that it will join the Department of Defense’s EHR system. The VA signed a 10-year, $10 billion contract with Cerner in 2018 develop their own EHR system to be integrated with MHS Genesis.
Ministry of Defense announced last Thursday that he deployed MHS Genesis “more than half of all [military health system] providers,” and by the end of 2023, it plans to “deploy the EHR system in 138 military hospitals and clinics worldwide.”
Meanwhile, the VA has faced significant delays in the rollout of its Millennium EHR system, which had been deployed at five medical facilities since 2020. The department announced earlier this month that it delay extension in rolling out its EHR system by June 2023 to address ongoing technical and system performance issues. October 13 announcement came after the VA in July delayed the rest of its planned 2022 deployment until the beginning of next year to address patient care issues, system failures, and performance issues that impede EHR system deployment.
