Cerner checks in on one-year anniversary of huge Defense Department EHR rollout

Newswire: Feb. 28, 2018.

Dateline: Kansas City.

Cerner has given an update on the rollout of its MHS Genesis project one year after it was installed at the first of four pilot sites in Washington. The electronic health records giant cited several gains and optimizations acheived so far while noting that the transformation of military health records is a complicated process fraught with challenges.

MHS Genesis went live at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Wash. on Feb. 28, 2017. It has since been implemented at three other sites in Washington state — Naval Hospital Oak Harbor, Naval Hospital Bremerton and Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma.

“Some early adoption issues mean that change management and governance processes are being refined,” Cerner wrote in a blog post. “Some issues logged have taken longer to resolve than we would have liked, and productivity at the local level has taken some time to normalize.”

MHS Genesis is currently in a “planned optimization phase,” where Cerner and The Leidos Partnership for Defense Health are addressing workflow issues and resolutions for them, assisting with change management, and answering questions. “An enterprise project of this size must be implemented thoughtfully, and we are working closely with our defense health system users to make that happen,” the company said.

It reported the following highlights from the first year:

• Fairchild Air Force Base is now Stage 6 on the HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, which Cerner notes is a designation applicable to just 22 percent of outpatient facilities.

• The average length of stay for sepsis patients at Madigan Army Medical Center has been shortened by 37 percent thanks to early recognition of sepsis risks.

• More than 2,600 non-medication orders have been canceled, showing a reduction in duplicating procedures such as imaging and lab work.

• Time per patient spent placing orders has dropped by 8 percent; while incremental, Cerner says it shows users find the workflow easier, which translates to more time spent with patients.

“These early successes prove we are on the right track, but our job is never done and pursuit of improvement will never cease,” Cerner said in summary.

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