DoD Nears Completion of Oracle Health EHR Implementation

The Department of Defense (DoD) has nearly completed its Oracle Health EHR implementation, according to reporting from GovCIO Media & Research.

"We're virtually complete with system deployment to what we call garrison DoD facilities," Chris Ruefer, deputy program executive officer for DHMS, said during a State of the Federal EHR event held last week.

DoD will officially complete the MHS Genesis EHR implementation in March 2024, when the system goes live with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) EHR at the Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago.

Once the deployment is complete, MHS Genesis will provide a single EHR for 9.6 million service members, veterans, and their families.

Ruefer said the EHR implementation team is now moving past the deployment phase and looking toward system optimization.

For instance, he noted that long interruptions of 60 seconds or more have gone down 24 percent. Additionally, 98.7 percent of users don't experience EHR glitches at all, up approximately 5.5 percent since 2022.

Ruefer emphasized that gathering feedback on the end-user experience is critical for the success of the EHR implementation.

"If we're not getting feedback from actual users, we're missing an important piece," Ruefer said.

He noted that DoD uses feedback forums, including local informatics steering committees and capability summits, to inform large system upgrades several times a year.