MHS Genesis EHR Ranks Last in Satisfaction, Dental Module Broken 6 Years

The Department of Defense spent over $11 billion deploying MHS Genesis, its new electronic health record system, across all military treatment facilities, completing the rollout in March 2024. Despite this massive investment, a GAO survey found that clinician satisfaction with MHS Genesis rose only slightly from 2022 to 2023 and still ranks last when compared with other EHR systems. The system's dental module, Dentrix, has been broken since 2018 -- six years of known dysfunction -- and DOD elevated the issue to 'severe' level but still does not have a plan or timeline for a replacement. For military clinicians, this means the system they are required to use every day actively slows down patient care. The system experienced 'intermittent network outages' in February 2024 that prevented patients from scheduling appointments, ordering lab tests, or filling prescriptions online. When the legacy TRICARE Online Patient Portal was deactivated on April 1, 2025, beneficiaries who had not migrated their records to MHS Genesis lost access to historical medical data. Every dental provider in the military health system is working with a module the DOD itself has classified as severely deficient, meaning dental readiness -- a deployment requirement for every service member -- is being tracked on a broken system. The structural cause is a procurement and integration failure. MHS Genesis is built on the Cerner (now Oracle Health) platform, which was selected in 2015. The DOD attempted to customize a commercial EHR for the unique requirements of military medicine (deployment health, combat trauma documentation, readiness tracking, dental readiness) and the customizations have not worked. The dental module was a known weak point from the beginning, but the procurement contract and deployment timeline did not allow for replacing it. Now that the system is fully deployed, switching dental platforms requires another multi-year acquisition process while clinicians use a tool they know is broken.