Tripler Army Medical Center

Media Release

www.tamc.amedd.army.mil; TAMCPublicAffairsOffice@amedd.army.mil

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For Immediate Release                             Contact: Tripler Public Affairs Office, 808-433-5785

Release Number 05-036                                                             April 27, 2005

 

 

Tripler phases in new electronic records system

Fewer appointments available at clinics being trained

 

Tripler Army Medical Center Public Affairs Office

 

       HONOLULU—Tripler Army Medical Center’s Family Practice Clinic and Adult Medicine Clinic staff will begin training on the military’s new Composite Health Care System II (CHCS II) May 24.

 

CHCS II, once implemented, will improve healthcare records of military members and their families. Healthcare providers will enter most medical information about their patients into CHCS II’s secure computerized databases.  Such medical information, now mostly paper-based, will then be almost instantly available to authorized military healthcare providers worldwide.

 

       Schofield Barracks Health Clinic staff is scheduled to begin CHCS training the last week in June and will resume normal operations by the second week of September.

 

       CHCS II implementation at Tripler and the Schofield Barracks Health Clinic will advance from clinic to clinic, until the entire Army medical staff in Hawaii is trained by the end of 2005.  The other military services in Hawaii are also beginning to phase in CHCS II.

 

Hawaii and the Pacific Region Commands are among the last in the Department of Defense (DoD) to implement CHCS II, which replaces the first CHCS system adopted by DoD in the late 1980s.

 

       Patients served from May 24 through mid July by the Family Practice Clinic, and May 24 through early August by the Adult Medicine Clinic at Tripler can expect fewer appointment times will be available during training.  As clinic staff is rotated through the computer classroom and hands-on training in their clinics, about a quarter of the healthcare staff may be unavailable to provide direct patient care.

 

       While affected clinics are phasing in CHCS II, clinic directors are requesting that patients who seek routine and optional medical care adjust their schedules to allow later appointment dates. This will help assure that patients who urgently require care during the estimated eight-week transition period continue to receive priority attention.

 

       A list of when Tripler clinics are scheduled for CHCS II implementation will be posted on the Tripler website soon at www.tamc.amedd.army.mil. These dates may change as the implementation proceeds, so patients should check the website for current information.

 

The Tripler Public Affairs Office will regularly announce implementation dates before the affected clinics begin their training phase.  Information Management Division (IMD) is scheduled to provide fliers and posters to clinics explaining the training process.

 

       Clinics and patient services offices that will begin CHCS II implementation through the end of June are listed below.

 

Tripler Army Medical Center	Start Date	Resume Normal Operations
Family Practice Clinic	May 24	Aug 19
Pediatric Clinic	June 6	Aug 11
Adult Medicine Clinic	June 2	Sep 12
Radiation Oncology Clinic	May 31	Aug 11
Patient Representative Office	May 23	Jun 16