Defense Department Halts Health Records Rollout During COVID-19

The Defense Department has temporarily suspended the deployment of its new commercial electronic health records system. According to an official from the Defense Healthcare Management System, the decision will allow military health care providers to better focus on the COVID-19 outbreak. The agency will continue to support eight existing deployments of the MHS Genesis software, the official said. “The MHS GENESIS team highly values people and recognizes the incredible efforts of our providers. We want to ensure our providers can remain focused on the pandemic and not be distracted with MHS GENESIS deployment activities,” Cori Hughes, director of program integration for the Defense Healthcare Management Systems, told Nextgov in an email. “In collaboration with our acquisition leadership and our functional champion, we will suspend MHS GENESIS deployment activities that distract our providers during their support of the COVID pandemic.”