MHS GENESIS, the new military EHR system for Department of Defense hospital sites, is now up and running at Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Designed by Cerner, the system is designed to manage the care and medical histories of active duty service members, retirees and their families. Staff at NMCCL began using it on March 19 and are the first in a number of providers across the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune scheduled to start using the system in the near future, according to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS).

NMCCL is part of a wave of North Carolina military sites where the new system will go live over the next week, including at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville and Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro.

Naval Health Clinic Cherry Point will be the next place that launches the MHS GENESIS platform, followed by sites throughout II MEF and MARSOC. Womack Army Medical Center is also preparing for the implementation of the new system at its own facilities, reported The Fayetteville Observer.

“For patients, during the first month, we expect fewer appointments because appointments are going to take longer, but we don’t expect this effect to be indefinite. As providers are speeding up, getting through the system faster, putting everything they’ve learned into application, which will result in quicker appointments and us seeing more people,” U.S. Navy Commander Jessica Pipkin, who has served as the MHS GENESIS site point of contact for Camp Lejeune, told DVIDS.

NMCCL expects temporarily longer waiting times in high-traffic areas such as the pharmacy and laboratory. But in the long-term, MHS GENESIS is predicted to speed up and make management of patient records more efficient and eliminate the need to transfer hard copies from one station to another. It will store medical and dental records for active duty specifically in a centralized location, which is easier for providers to access when searching for a patient’s health history from DoD sites worldwide.

In preparation for the new system, staff members have spent over 7,000 hours of in-classroom training, as well as virtual training, to learn about it, says NMCCL Commander and Director, U.S. Navy Captain Reginald Ewing. “Our personnel have given a lot of time and heart to learning how to use this new electronic health record. Approximately 3,800 personnel have trained on MHS GENESIS.”

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