Information Technology

My friend forwarded me the following fictitious story about a struggle with laser printers in the Air Force medical clinic. I'm sure it can't be true!

I was stationed at an Air Force Base for 4 years. I had a computer and a printer in my office. The printer was non-networked and plugged directly in the back of the computer.

The first year everything went fine with that arrangement. Then the toner ran out. No money for toner I was told, you have to wait until the first of the next fiscal year. As it turns out I waited for toner for over a year, walking down the hall to collect printer documents. Great exercise, walking up and down the hallway 5-10 minutes per hour. All the time the Air Force is asking, "why aren't Air Force providers more efficient?"

The Army Surgeon General was reported in a recent Stars and Stripes article by Tom Philbot as saying AHLTA is a significant contributing factor to attrition of military medicine personnel. The Deputy Surgeons General from the Navy and Air Force were also described as having similar remarks. Efforts by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Dr. Ward Cascells to fix the problems are also detailed.

Below are a couple of select quotes from an article discussing electronic medical records written by John Timmer that was published on Ars Technica. The article was not written about AHLTA specifically but the quotes are very applicable:

800 AHLTA users from the Army, Navy and Air Force completed a satisfaction survey that was conducted during the summer of 2007. 459 providers responded. Overall satisfaction was below average. Here is a breakdown of the provider results:

NextGov is running a story about "re-engineering" plans for AHLTA:

The Defense Department has laid the groundwork for a radical shift in the way it processes and stores soldiers’ and veterans’ electronic health records, planning to re-engineer a system a network it spent $6 billion and eight years developing in-house for one based on industry standards, commercial software and re-use of existing code that will serve Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department, top officials told Nextgov.

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