AHLTA, Maybe Not a Noun

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.