Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR)

See the following -

Been there, Done that, Doesn’t Work: Veterans Health Administration IT goes back in time

If you have an interest in the worlds of economics, healthcare or technology, here’s a story that’s emerged this month that is worth noting for the record books. In the US, amidst the chaos of the Trump administration, yet another mistake has been made this month. For the record, it is worth noting that the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration (VHA) ended up with a contract for a large IT solution for the next 10 years worth about $10 billion as of May 2018. On the face of it that may appear to be unremarkable news: just another big expensive contract for an IT system. Yet there is a part sad/part silly dimension to it that is well worth flagging up at this point.

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DSS, Inc. Releases New Version of Open Source EHR, vxVistA, to Healthcare IT Community

Press Release | Document Storage Systems, Inc. | June 28, 2016

Document Storage Systems, Inc. (DSS, Inc.), a leading provider of health information technology (HIT) solutions for federal, private and public healthcare organizations, today announced the release of the latest vxVistA Open Source electronic health record (EHR) version 15.0 under Apache 2.0 license. The latest version of vxVistA will improve workflow efficiency, enable interoperability and enhance patient safety through modernizing the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) legacy system. Hospitals, clinics, physician practices and community health organizations are able to access vxVistA 15.0 via The VistA Extensions Hub...

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Oroville Hospital’s Scheduler: a winning technology

On October 3rd, the winners of the US Dept of Veteran’s Affairs’ (VA) Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest were announced.  In second place was the OH Scheduler, which was the submission from Oroville Hospital in California.  I’d like to expand on their press release and provide some background to the technology that was used to develop their scheduler: it’s very much a case study of everything I’ve been talking about in my blog The EWD Files. As it happens, the OH Scheduler was first and foremost designed and developed for use at Oroville Hospital.  However, since their Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) is based on the VA’s VistA system, Oroville Hospital believed that it should also meet many of the key requirements of the VA and therefore submitted it as a contender for the VA’s competition. Read More »

VistA Evolution: What's Wrong With this Picture?

The VA has begun awarding a number of very high-value contracts under the umbrella of the VistA Evolution initiative (eg to ASM Research/Accenture), but in my opinion, there are problems looming on the horizon.  From what I understand about the direction that these projects are taking (with encouragement, it seems, from within the VA), there’s a real risk that we’ll see a repeat of previous attempts to modernize VistA, the result of which was very expensive failure with essentially nothing to show for it.  The losers, if this happens, are not only US taxpayers: it’s the Veterans whose future welfare depends on VistA4 being a success.

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