03/24/09 05:46 pm ET
Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., seems as confused as I am on how AHLTA, the name for the Defense Department's electronic health record system, has morphed from an acronym into a noun.
When the Military Health System renamed its Composite Health Care System to AHLTA in 2005, it said AHLTA was an acronym that stood for the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application system.
But, as Pecksniffian readers pointed out to me last month, the MHS Clinical Information Technology Program Office declared in 2006 that AHLTA would be a proper noun, and not an acronym.
Snyder said at a hearing held today by the Joint Military Personnel and Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities subcommittees of the House Armed Service Committee that turning AHLTA into a noun has rendered it meaningless.
AHLTA, the noun, Snyder said, "does not convey what it means" and then said he knew it meant the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application system. Evidently MHS has not sent Snyder a copy of the 2006 AHLTA noun memo.
Dr. S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, has the power to reverse this linguistic absurdity by issuing a superseding memo to turn AHLTA from a noun back into an acronym.
I hope he does strike a blow for the preservation of the language before he leaves office at the end of April.
COMMENTS
We have a system that has put medications for one patient into the records of other patients, we have hundreds if not thousands of AHLTA records on patients that cannot be opened at the point of care (many of these are our Wounded Warriors), we have contracting companies that refuse to share knowledge with companies working right in the same office (mainly due to self interested SOW's) and contracting officers that allow it to continue year after year, we have all levels using what little time is available to 'staff' problems instead of solving them, we have all levels wasting time in CYA documentation instead of getting out to the clinics where the help is really needed, we have far to many empire builders pulling at what we should all be focused on, better patient care, and we have learned all to well the phrase, "log a ticket"...instead of I'll be right there to help you doctor.
And now, let's spend time and resources on what to call AHLTA....PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Give me a break! Call it Ralph...call it late for dinner...just get it fixed.
People, if you can't or won't do it right....then please go do it somewhere else!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bob, you need to get a list of open tickets from MHS and look at them...you will be absolutely shocked.
withheld@withheld.org 07/03/09 02:49 pm ET