As of March 1, more than 234,000 Army Medicine healthcare beneficiaries and almost 3,000 Army providers have signed up for the Army Medicine Secure Messaging Service (AMSMS). The messaging service allows patients and providers across 52 Military Treatment Facilities (MTF) worldwide to communicate on a secure network regarding non-urgent healthcare concerns.
The AMSMS network also allows beneficiaries to view their electronic personal healthcare record, request appointments, request medication refills or renewals, as well as allow providers to push important preventative care updates to patients.
According to Dr. Terry Newton, M.D., Information Technology Clinical Capability Manager, “Army Medicine issued nearly 3,000 AMSMS licenses to healthcare providers in 2012 and 2013. Over the next six months over 1,000 additional licenses will be issued to primary and specialty care clinics.”
Other branches of the military are also executing the same secure messaging capability across their treatment facility network. Although they use different names for their secure messaging systems, both the Air Force and Navy have made considerable progress signing up users.
Both the Air Force and Navy now have roughly 573,000 users combined enrolled. This venture has more than 850,000 combined users through all services, as well as 7.600 providers, and more than 17,500 primary care team members.
A recent secure messaging survey demonstrated that 97 percent of over 12,000 survey respondents were satisfied with their secure messaging transaction and more than 86 percent agreed it helped them avoid a trip to the emergency room or to an MTF for a medical problems.