Sometimes Epic Doesn’t Win: Public Hospital Goes Open Source

Anne Zieger | Hospital EMR and EHR | June 18, 2012

Most of the hospitals I write about go with big, expensive commercial EMR packages and suffer through upgrades and code fix schedules imposed by the vendor.  The process seems pretty miserable, and rather inefficient, but IT departments are stuck with it. That being said, at least some hospitals take advantage of the open source paradigm, including the following midwestern facility.Most of the hospitals I write about go with big, expensive commercial EMR packages and suffer through upgrades and code fix schedules imposed by the vendor.  The process seems pretty miserable, and rather inefficient, but IT departments are stuck with it. That being said, at least some hospitals take advantage of the open source paradigm, including the following midwestern facility.

Oklahoma-based Stilwell Memorial Hospital, a 50-bed public facility, has decided to install Medsphere Systems Corp.’s OpenVista EHR.  The Medsphere product is an open source derivative of the Department of Defense’s widely praised VistA system.  Rather than millions of upfront bucks, Medsphere charges a subscription fee for OpenVista use.

As part of choosing OpenVista, Stilwell Memorial becomes part of Medsphere’s “Healthcare Open Source Ecosystem,” in which various users share code, system upgrades and tips for managing the system. The question that pops into my head, as I read the background on this install, is why we’re hearing about a 50-bed hospital making this selection, but few if any medium-sized or large community hospitals...