People gather at the Officers' Club for a town hall meeting on the Military Health System Genesis recordkeeping system at Yokota Air Base, Japan, Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — The new electronic system for health care records coming to Indo-Pacific bases has its shortcomings but is otherwise an improvement over its predecessor, Air Force doctors said at a town hall Thursday.
Military Health System Genesis will allow patients to access their health records, provide more efficient management of complex health conditions and allow patients to communicate directly with providers, according to information from Yokota’s 374th Medical Group.
However, medicals for children ages 13-17 will not be available online, Dr. Matthew Bezzant, an Air Force major and chief medical information officers for the medical group, told about 50 people gathered at the Officers’ Club.
“So, there's this weird dead zone as of right now with the portal, with children 13 to 17 you can't see their medical information and your kid cannot create a login because they're not 18 yet,” he said.
Yokota, the headquarters of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo, recently warned its community to expect longer-than-normal wait times for medical care, including prescription refills, when MHS Genesis comes online. The system is scheduled to be running Oct. 28.
Bezzant said privacy laws prevent even parents from seeing health care records of children between 13 and 17, who coincidentally cannot create their own Genesis accounts.
“It’s poor programming and a combination of issues, but they are trying to fix it,” he told the gathering.
Dr. Gregory Richert, an Air Force colonel who serves as commander of the 374th Medical Group and command surgeon for 5th Air Force and U.S. Forces Japan, explains the Military Health System Genesis system during a town hall meeting at Yokota Air Base, Japan, Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)
In the meantime, parents will have to make office appointments for their children, Bezzant said.
Making an appointment for his 13-year-old daughter is already a slow process, said Lester Farley, a Defense Department civilian employee and Air Force retiree at Yokota.
“I have to call now,” he said after the town hall. “And I believe there's already a shortage of pediatrics, so it's already a slow process to get her an appointment.”
Military bases in the Indo-Pacific are the “last wave” of the MHS Genesis changeover, said Dr. Gregory Richert, an Air Force colonel, commander of the 374th Medical Group and the command surgeon for 5th Air Force and USFJ.
MHS Genesis’ issues processing prescription refills results in longer wait times at the pharmacy, Richert told the 45-minute town hall. This is his first experience with the new electronic recordkeeping system, he said.
“My recommendations are, as you have long-term chronic medications, to try to fill that before mid-October so that you don't run out early November,” Richert told the audience.
The Defense Health Agency is sending a team of medical professionals to train medical staff on the system, Richert told Stars and Stripes after the town hall. They’ve been using MHS Genesis at their commands for about a year, he said.
DHA installed MHS Genesis at military bases in the Pacific Northwest in 2017, followed by 25 military hospitals and clinics in other parts of the United States, according to Health.mil.
Despite its problems, MHS Genesis has positive aspects, Richert told the town hall. It is a standard program for all military facilities, so a service member arriving at an Air Force base from a Navy base, for example, will have their records available quickly.
“Genesis keeps it simple so that we keep people standardized,” he said.
