Latest news with #MHSGenesis
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Military families face four key health care deadlines by March 31
Military families have two weeks to meet March 31 deadlines for four important tasks related to their health care. Enroll in a health care flexible spending account: In a special enrollment period through March 31, active duty service members have the option of enrolling in a health care flexible spending account, a new benefit that could help defray their out-of-pocket health care costs. A health care flexible spending account, or FSA, is a savings account that can be used to pay for items not covered by health or dental insurance. Service members can contribute any amount between $100 and $3,300 in pretax earnings this year toward eligible health care expenses, and then submit receipts for those expenses to be reimbursed from their account. Each year, the Internal Revenue Service determines eligible expenses and contribution limits. By contributing to FSAs, the taxable income decreases by the contribution amount. Savings average 30% on eligible health care expenses, according to the Federal Flexible Spending Account Prog?am, or FSAFEDS, which administers the FSA program for the Defense Department and other federal agencies. Visit for more information and to enroll. Download health records from the Tricare Online Patient Portal: The TOL Patient Portal will be shut down on April 1 and replaced by the Defense Department's new electronic health record, MHS Genesis. To keep a copy of legacy health records, beneficiaries must download them by March 31. All military hospitals and clinics have made the transition to MHS Genesis, and the previous records won't transfer to MHS Genesis. However, providers will continue to have access to the complete health records, according to the Defense Health Agency. Beneficiaries can also request a physical copy from their military hospital or clinic's records management office by completing a request form in person, then returning at a later date to pick up the records. Starting April 1, to get access to your legacy records, you'll have to complete this process. To download the records, visit and log in using the required credentials. The web page provides instructions. Beneficiaries in the Tricare West Region must set up their payment with TriWest: Beneficiaries who pay for their Tricare coverage using a bank electronic funds transfer, credit card or debit card, must provide that information to the new West Region contractor, TriWest Healthcare Alliance. Officials extended the deadline to March 31 following beneficiaries' difficulty in accessing the TriWest web portal and other issues. This affects certain beneficiaries enrolled in Tricare Prime, Tricare Select, Tricare Young Adult, Tricare Reserve Select and Tricare Retired Reserve. Officials have assured beneficiaries that if they pay by allotment, their allotments will be transferred automatically to TriWest from the previous contractor. That hasn't happened for some people, Military Times previously reported, and beneficiaries should check their pay statements for allotment information. The payment requirement affects all West Region beneficiaries, including those in the six states that moved to the region: Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin. Visit the TriWest secure portal at select 'Sign up as a new user or log in' and follow the instructions. For assistance, call TriWest's customer service center at 888-874-9378. The West Region referral waiver period ends soon, so use Tricare Prime referrals for specialty care before March 31: Amid issues with TriWest, officials temporarily suspended a rule requiring beneficiaries to get their referrals to specialists approved, essentially allowing Tricare West Prime beneficiaries to bypass TriWest in order to get specialty care. This is retroactive to Jan. 1. The waiver doesn't apply to some inpatient care and some specialty care, such as applied behavior analysis or autism care demonstration services. The process is different for those with referrals and authorizations issued before Jan. 1 by the previous contractor. Those will be accepted through their expiration date or June 30, whichever comes first.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Defense Health Agency Director Ends 32-Year Career with Unceremonious, Abrupt Retirement
Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, the Defense Health Agency's top official, retired last week, according to a surprise announcement from the Pentagon on Friday. Dr. Stephen Ferrara, acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said Crosland, who had served as the agency's director for two years, was "beginning her retirement" effective Friday. No reason was given for her departure; Crosland had been scheduled to speak Monday at the AMSUS Society of Federal Health Professionals' annual meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. Her departure follows the high-profile firings last month of top military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. "CQ" Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife, and the services' top attorneys. Read Next: Fear and Chaos Hit Military Families After Sudden Firings of Top Leaders "I want to thank Lt. Gen. Crosland for her dedication to the nation, to the Military Health System, and to Army Medicine for the past 32 years," Ferrara said in a statement. Crosland graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1989 and earned her medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences before embarking on a career as a family medicine physician. She was the fourth director of the Defense Health Agency and the third Black woman to reach the rank of lieutenant general in the Army. When she assumed the role of DHA director, she pledged to focus on serving patients, creating a Defense Department medical system that best served active-duty members and their families. Under her watch, the DHA completed the rollout of its MHS Genesis electronic health records system, a $5.5 billion program that provided and managed a new medical records system built to be interoperable with the Department of Veterans Affairs system. The DHA also consolidated the organization's 20 regional medical markets into nine networks led by a general or flag officer who has responsibilities for both the service medical command duties -- taking care of active-duty personnel -- and the DHA, which manages hospitals, training, supplies, procurement, and the Tricare health program for military dependents and retirees. The news also follows reports of short- or understaffed military health facilities including Naval Hospital Bremerton, Washington, which planned to transfer roughly 700 Medicare-eligible internal medicine patients to civilian providers since shortages left the clinic manned with one physician for 2,200 beneficiaries, according to the Kitsap Sun. Other hospitals, like Naval Hospital Okinawa, also have been chronically understaffed, resulting in stress for military personnel and families. And last month, deferred maintenance at the system's premier medical facility, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland -- where President Donald Trump is scheduled to receive his annual physical next month -- caused flooding and other system failures that delayed surgeries and sent patients elsewhere. Since Jan. 1, patients who use the Tricare health program also have experienced delays in specialty referrals and care, while some providers still have not been paid in more than eight weeks following a changeover in Tricare regional contract management companies and payment processors in the Tricare East and West Regions. As a result of those problems, Crosland issued a letter Feb. 3 to all Tricare beneficiaries saying the DHA had taken a number of steps to fix the issues and aimed to insulate patients from the turmoil. "Individuals who need health care should get that care regardless of TriWest's ability to manage the process," Crosland wrote, referring to the Tricare West regional contractor, which assumed management of the West Region on Jan. 1. According to Ferrara, Dr. David Smith, who served as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs in 2017 and from 2021 to 2022, will serve as acting DHA director. reached out to Crosland on Monday for comment. She said she had nothing more to add than what had been released. Related: Tricare to Allow Patients in Tricare West Region to Receive Specialty Care Without Preapproval
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Military Health System Beneficiaries Urged to Download Old Medical Records by April 1
The Department of Defense plans to decommission the online portal patients use to access old military health information and recommends patients download their digital medical records if they want to retain copies. With the Defense Health Agency's transition to the MHS Genesis electronic health record complete, the Tricare Online Patient Portal will cease to be available as of April 1, according to the Pentagon. Medical providers will continue having access to the records and copies of old records will be maintained at military health facilities, but they won't be accessible online after that date. Officials are urging patients to maintain their own copies, according to several DoD news releases. "All military hospitals and clinics have transitioned to MHS Genesis. We encourage you to take these important steps to save your personal health records before the [Tricare Online] Patient Portal decommissions," said Rear Adm. Tracy Farrill, a DHA electronic health records expert, in a statement. Read Next: Data Breach Prompts Coast Guard to Take Personnel and Pay System Offline Military treatment facility patients who want to download their records must go to and sign in with a DS Logon, Common Access Card or myPay login. They then must go to the Tricare Online page and click on the blue "Health Record" tab to view their data and follow directions for downloading. They can download a PDF or XML continuity of care file that can be shared with other providers, health care systems or family. Patients may not find complete copies of their medical records, depending on when they entered the military health system and when their military treatment facility began using a digital electronic health records platform, according to DHA spokeswoman Brenda Campbell. Likewise, their legacy records will be only as new as when their military hospital or clinic switched over to MHS Genesis, a transition completed by the military health system between 2017 and 2024. "Legacy electronic health records in [Tricare Online] only reflect periods of time when a beneficiary's military hospital or clinic was using the previous electronic health record platform. MHS Genesis health records only reflect periods of time when a beneficiary's military hospital or clinic was using MHS Genesis," Campbell said in a Jan. 27 email to The new MHS Genesis records do not contain information from previous electronic and paper health records, but providers still have access to those records to treat their patients, she added. The Defense Department embarked on a multiyear contract with Cerner, now part of Oracle Health, in 2015 to provide an electronic health records system that would be completely compatible with the Department of Veterans Affairs system. MHS Genesis is now used at 138 military hospitals and clinics and more than 3,600 DoD locations worldwide, according to the Defense Department. The VA contracted with Cerner for a similar system in 2018, but the VA required that its system, now called the Federal Electronic Health Records System, include the capability to upload all legacy medical records. The VA has encountered multiple issues in adopting the new program and has installed it at only six facilities with the intention to restart the rollout next year. With the decommissioning of the DoD portal, parents of those under the age of 12 can still view and download their children's legacy health records, but they may view only limited information such as test results for flu or COVID-19, allergies, vitals and immunization data for children ages 12 to 17 online. Children of those ages can request copies of their own medical records at their military treatment facility, and parents can ask their adolescent children's providers or clinics for printed health records. Parents may not download dependent records for children over the age of 18. Those beneficiaries -- active or former -- are eligible for a DS Logon, according to Campbell, and can access their own legacy health records. Again, she added, copies of old records, either paper or electronic, can be requested at a nearby military hospital and clinic. According to Tricare, the portal decommissioning should not affect a service member's ability to file a claim with the VA since providers still will have access to complete health records. The DHA urged patients to download records and store them to ensure that they are available if needed. "Your medical history is a valuable resource for managing your health, and saving your records now ensures you have access if you need it," Farrill said. Related: Military Clinicians Not Particularly Happy with DoD's New Electronic Health Records System, Watchdog Finds
