The Gateway

After much planning and preparation, MC4 helped Winn Army Community Hospital (ACH) keep its pharmacy department functional while its Composite Health Care System (CHCS) server was being replaced and updated.

This procedure disabled CHCS, AHLTA, Essentris and a host of other health care programs that depend on CHCS for 24 hours on the 27th of May and the first day of the Memorial Day weekend. 

The majority of the hospital departments had to revert to paper record documentation during the server switch, but the pharmacy department was able to maintain electronic medical prescription service and print labels.

Why was this such a big deal?  When the chief of pharmacy was approached about the loss of CHCS and AHLTA, he knew the pharmacy would lose the ability to create and print labels for prescriptions. The pharmacy would have to rely upon typewriters, aligning sticky labels in a type writer, the cost of creating those labels with “Winn Army Community Hospital Pharmacy” on them and the ability to verify the accuracy of the labels before printing would be lost. 

This option was not viable and the chief pharmacist was going to shut down the pharmacy completely during the 24-hour server switch. But, the chief of pharmacy thought of the possibility of MC4 support to alleviate the problems associated with using a typewriter, and I told him that I had plenty of wonderful experiences with the MC4 program managers and system administrators and that I would contact them for help.

I contacted Wesley Torres and Walter Kreutz, and they contacted Mr. Bert Kinkead. From there I knew we would be in good hands because I've worked with Mr. Kinkead when he was Colonel Kinkead, chief of staff for 3rd MEDCOM.  We held a teleconference with MC4 (Mr. Kreutz), Lieutenant Colonel William Starnes (pharmacist) and the Winn Information Management Division leadership (Mr. Arthur Kirshner and myself) to establish the requirements for the mission. We hashed out the details and the only thing left was the assignment of a MC4 systems administrator to execute the mission.

MC4’s Paul Gilmore was assigned to the mission and his service was exemplary! From the initial site visit, to the training of the Winn ACH pharmacy staff on the MC4 systems, the creation of the pharmacy labels, and finally the execution of the mission to keep the Winn ACH pharmacy functional. Because of this coordination, we were able to prescribe medicine to the patients of the emergency room and the various in-patients hospitalized during the scheduled server downtime.