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Return to Article: Army abruptly stops rollout of electronic dental record application

• 91815
  

  So...in reading this, the Army obligated $11M dollars in June when they agreed to accept AHLTA Dental and now they don't want it. They want to stay with their archaic system that is a stand-alone system...not move forward with the times and modernize. They already have AHLTA for medical...and the dental and medical programs work together worldwide. military member can be anywhere and they have instant access to medical and dental records. CDA is a stand-alone system. With the amount of money they have put into AHLTA Dental, the number of military sites already trained, the Army wants to throw that away? Isn't the $11M they obligated in June considered Fraud, Waste, and Abuse? The Army is the oldest and the biggest, but DHIMS has praised AHLTA Dental and Medical and needs to stand up and tell the Army they accepted, the money has been obligated, sites have been trained, and if CDA is as great as they think, wouldn't they have won the original contract with the DoD?

  Concerned Tax Payer Posted November 11, 2009 5:27 PM
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  To Citizen, Excellence, streamlining solutions... Great concepts on paper, but it does not describe AHLTA dental. For an administrator, it's a great tool, becasue it was designed as a data mining application, not a patient centered, clinical e-record. For a clinician like me, it adds 2-3 hours a day to make patient care entries in AHALTA, becasue it is a cumbersom, extremely flawwed application. Sometimes it takes me longer to enter the entry in AHALTA than it takes me to see the patient! My hats off to you Army, for taking a stand for the clinicians and our patients.

  AF DDS Posted November 5, 2009 10:20 AM
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  Spoken like a true SAIC employee Chuck! If hAHLTA Dental is only half the productivity killer that the Medical version is then we can look forward to the services curtailing Active Duty dental care in addition to Family Member and Retiree. What's a little dental readiness among friends, as long as we have a shiny, non-functioning, enterprise wide product?

  E.J. Posted November 5, 2009 8:56 AM
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  This is another in a very long list of examples where individuals in leadership position are uncommitted to viewing the larger enterprise perspective and focus virtually exclusively on their stove-piped silos of less than excellence.

  Only until government organizations develop and implement leadership programs that focus on enterprise performance outcomes rather than parochial interests will effective leaders began focusing on streamlining solutions rather than insisting on maintaining their own unnecessary individual solutions.

  citizen Posted November 5, 2009 7:29 AM
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  I see that the IT jobs protection program in the Army is alive and well. We still have people that refuse to move forward on joint IT programs that will provide a DOD wide enterprise approach. They do so just to insure that they are protecting their own kingdoms. It's time to start firing these obstuctionists and get moving forward.

  Chuck Posted November 4, 2009 12:29 PM