Alabama and Other Southern States Embracing 'Open Health' Solutions

The installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have continued to spread across Alabama and many other states across the U.S.  See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in Alabama and neighboring states in the South.


 

In the state of Alabama, all of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare facilities are continuing to use the well known, award winning VistA System. VA healthcare facilities (i.e. hospitals, outpatient clinics, nursing homes) using VistA include the:

• Birmingham VA Medical Center
• Tuscaloosa VA Hospital
• Tuskegee VA Hospital
• Montgomery VA Hospital
• Anniston/Oxford VA Clinic
• Bessemer VA Clinic
• Childersburg VA Clinic
• Dothan VA Clinic
• Gadsden VA Clinic
• Guntersville VA Clinic
• Huntsville VA Clinic
• Jasper VA Clinic
• Madison/Decatur VA Clinic
• Mobile VA Clinic
• Selma VA Clinic
• Shoals Area/Florence VA Clinic
• Wiregrass VA Clinic

The following Indian Health Service (IHS) or Native American Tribal healthcare facilities in Alabama are currently using a variant of the VistA system known as RPMS:

• Poarch Creek Tribal Health Clinic

The following are other Federal, State, and local community healthcare facilities in Alabama currently using VistA or other derivatives of the system, to some extent. e.g. CHCS, OpenVistA, vxVistA.

• Cooper Green Mercy Hospital
• Fort Rucker Army Aeromedical Center
• Bay Minette State Veterans Home
• Huntsville State Veterans Home

See the map of all healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in Alabama and other states across the U.S.  The system is one of the most widely deployed EHR systems in the country and is used by clinicians treating well over 10 million patients in federal, state and local healthcare facilities. The list of sites running VistA is still evolving. There ae still several hundred sites to be added to the database.

Finally, other popular 'open source' EHR systems in use across Alabama and other states in the South  include OpenEMR and OpenMRS. It has been estimated that there are more than 5,000 installations of OpenEMR in physician offices and other small healthcare facilities across the U.S. serving more than 30 million patients. Further, conservative estimates by the OpenEMR Organization(OEMR)  indicate that OpenEMR is installed in over 15,000 healthcare facilities around the world, translating into more than 45,000 practitioners using the system serving approximately 90 million patients.  As of 2012, OpenMRS was in use at over 100 facilities in more than 30 countries and had been used to record over 2 million patient records around the world.

Don't forget to read related articles about 'open source', 'open data', 'open access', and 'open standards' in Alabama that have been posted on Open Health News (OHN).

Open Health News (OHN) plans on releasing a comprehensive report on the VistA Market in September with detailed information on VistA deployments state-by-state across the U.S., as well as in countries overseas, e.g. India, Jordan, Mexico, etc.  Also, Peter Groen, Senior Editor at OHN, will be presenting more on the subject and the associated VistA Installations GIS Map & Database v.1.0 at the upcoming OSEHRA Summit meeting.