MHS leaders chewing over e-dental options
By Peter Buxbaum
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Military Health System and the armed services are considering halting the continued deployment of the official MHS dental electronic record and replacing it with an Army-developed tool.
The period of consideration is taking the form of a "strategic pause" in the deployment of AHLTA-dental, the official system, while examining the capabilities of the Army Corporate Dental Application.
Nextgov.com reported earlier this month that Army deputy surgeon general Maj. Gen. David Rubenstein had directed the Army Medical Command to suspend the deployment of AHLTA Dental, which had been scheduled to be rolled out in the first week of this month.
Military Health System leaders are now considering back-filling military’s electronic dental record needs with the Army system.
Jack Smith, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) for clinical and program policy, said military healthcare leaders were “still evaluating the business case for a change.”
The Army’s Corporate Dental Application is available at many Army and Air Force dental clinics including some locations in the Southwest Asia theater.
The Army system “appears to provide a reasonable alternate to address many of the current needs of our dental providers and is in alignment with our electronic health record strategy,” Smith said.
Charles Campbell, MHS’s chief information officer, said DOD is still weighing its options. “We need to make sure we can keep pace with the dental community’s evolving needs,” he said. “I would rather take time to examine those needs and make adjustments now rather than replacing the system later.”
The AHLTA Dental application was designed in 2002 to provide one of five capabilities required by the dental community in its initial deployment, according to MHS spokesman Terry Jones. "Further capabilities were planned for later releases."
Those capabilities included an electronic dental record, appointment and scheduling functionality, dental workload and readiness reporting, management of artifacts and images within the electronic dental record, and availability in theater of all of the above.
Meanwhile, the Army’s Corporate Dental Application has "acquired many robust features, to manage day to day dental activities," said Jones. "It provides some of the dental community’s required capabilities that are not in the AHLTA dental module."
MHS is not considering pulling AHLTA-dental where it has already been deployed, according to Jones. The Army launched AHLTA-dental at two dental clinics on Fort Sam Houston, Texas, in 2006 as part of a test and evaluation program, he added, and "have continued using AHLTA-dental since that time."
