VistA EHR

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Regarding Open Source, Security, and Cloud Migration, Old Prejudices Die Hard in Health Care

Although the health care industry has made great strides in health IT, large numbers of providers remain slow to reap the benefits of a “digital transformation”. Health care organizations focus on what they get paid for and neglect other practices that would improve care and security. At conferences and meetings year and after year, I have to listen to health care leaders tediously explode the same myths and explain the same principles over and over. In this article I'll concentrate on the recent EXPO.health conference, put on in Boston by John Lynn's Healthcare Scene, where the topics of free and open source EHRs, security, and cloud migration got mired down in rather elementary discussions.

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Regenstrief Institute Research Scientist Theresa Cullen, M.D., Receives Women In Leadership Award

Press Release | Regenstrief Institute | October 21, 2019

Regenstrief Institute research scientist Theresa Cullen, M.D., has won a Leading for Impact, Women in Leadership award. The award recognizes women who are creating impact and leading programs across the federal technology, health and consulting community. The award is given by FedHealthInnovation & Technology (FedHealthIT), which is a consolidated news source for information related to federal health agencies. Dr. Cullen also is the associate director of the Regenstrief Institute Global Health Informatics program and the interim director of strategic planning and communications for LOINC. She recently led a project to help the United States government's Indian Health Service identify and define its needs for a new health information technology system.

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Release of the VistA Evolution Program Plan and VistA 4 Product Roadmap

Press Release | OSEHRA | May 9, 2014

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has requested OSEHRA’s assistance in publicizing two key documents: the VistA Evolution Program Plan and the VistA 4 Product Roadmap. These official reports, submitted to Congress in March of this year, contain a wealth of information and specific plans to make VistA a state-of-the-art electronic health record.

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Roger Baker: Why VA's Electronic Health Record Mega-Project is Failing

Roger Baker | FCW | July 26, 2021

The Department of Veterans Affairs currently is reassessing its $16 billion-plus Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) effort. Faced with productivity and patient safety issues in its initial pilot site, further rollouts of the EHRM have been paused by VA Secretary Denis McDonough. And while VA has not yet announced the details of the actions it will take to correct the EHRM program, those actions must include addressing the program's fundamental problems, not just the readily apparent quality and productivity problems surfaced at the pilot site. Read More »

Sacred Oak Medical Center Selects Medsphere's OpenVista EHR

Press Release | Medsphere, RedShift Healthcare Management and Consulting | June 16, 2016

Medsphere Systems Corporation...today announced that Sacred Oak Medical Center has chosen the OpenVista® electronic health record (EHR) system for implementation. The brand new Houston-based inpatient behavioral health hospital will open later this summer with 20 beds and expand over time to an 80-bed capacity..."The benefits of EHR implementation apply to behavioral health care and addiction treatment, just as they do in acute medical care,” said RedShift Managing Partner Starsky Bomer. 

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Samuel Shem Calls for Using VistA and the VA Model of Care to Solve the Physician Burnout Crisis

On November 1st Newsweek published an extraordinary Op-Ed by Samuel Shem titled Why Computerized Medical Records Are Bad for Both You and Your Doctor. In the article, Shem, pen name for the American psychiatrist and well-known author Stephen Joseph Bergman, presents evidence that poorly designed electronic medical records (EMRs) and over-regulation are to blame for the growing crisis of physician burnout and suicide. The rate of suicides among physicians has risen to a staggering number--three per day. Shem argues that there is a "better way," and that is shown by the electronic health record (EHR) system used by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The VA's EHR is called VistA. Shem's view is supported by a large and increasing number of physicians and nurses. Read More »

Sorry VistA, DoD's health record won't be open source

Molly Bernhart Walker | FierceGovernmentIT | February 25, 2015

The Defense Department's next electronic health record will not be based on the open source architecture that supports the Veterans Affairs Department's EHR. A change to the Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization solicitation narrowed down the field of contractors vying for the $11 billion program – eliminating the only proposed solution built on the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA.

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State University of New York at Albany Launches VistA EHR Studies Program

The Albany Campus of the State University of New York (SUNY) has launched a new VistA EHR Studies program—the most comprehensive one of its kind in the United States. The program, which began on March 24, provides students the basis to learn and manage VistA’s fast-growing open source electronic health record (EHR) system. The decision to launch the full program follows a successful pilot course taught at the university this past fall. Read More »

Tech Glitches at One VA Site Raise Concerns About a Nationwide Rollout

Spokane, Washington, was supposed to be the center of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ tech reinvention, the first site in the agency’s decade-long project to change its medical records software. But one morning in early March, the latest system malfunction made some clinicians snap. At Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center, the records system — developed by Cerner Corp., based in North Kansas City, Missouri — went down. Staffers, inside the hospital and its outpatient facilities, were back to relying on pen and paper. Computerized schedules were inaccessible. Physicians couldn’t enter new orders or change patients’ medications.

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Tenzing Medical

Historically, hospitals have been naïve consumers of electronic health records. Hospitals typically spend 25 million dollars on their electronic health records. While hospitals and healthcare executives have, for many years, made decisions on procuring cutting-edge medical technologies, information technology has been relegated to vendor solutions. Tenzing Medical, LLC is comprised of healthcare and medical experts that have experience in the development and procurement of electronic health information. It is Tenzing Medical's mission to help guide healthcare institution to make better and more efficient information technology choices. Tenzing Medical is interested in health information at all levels beginning at the medical evaluation through the reporting of medical metrics.

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The EHR Debacle: Has Organized Medicine Failed Us?

By now, it should be no secret that physicians in the United States, although largely receptive to the idea of electronic health records (EHRs), are widely dissatisfied with the current state of the art, and with the way that EHR adoption is being implemented.[1] Indeed, Congress[2] has shown continuing – but sometimes seemingly perfunctory – interest in the concerns of physicians and other health care providers, and I am at this point pessimistic about seeing any results of its efforts in the near future unless a more fundamental change is made in our approach. As Einstein noted, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”

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The Impact of Open Source in the Healthcare Industry in 2014

Luis Ibáñez | Opensource.com | December 26, 2014

Healthcare is one of the most urgent socioeconomic issues of our time. This year, Opensource.com saw a variety of news and feature stories about applying the open source way and open source software (including tools) to alleviating the many problems faced by the healthcare industry. Here are this year's best of the best from Opensource.com in open health.

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The VA Waitlist Fiasco: VistA Should Not be Thrown Out With the Bathwater

Without a doubt, the death of American veterans as a result of the VA waitlist debacle is tragic and unacceptable. The Obama administration must move quickly and deliberately to fix the underlying problems and restore faith in the agency. If these issues were common throughout the VA network of hospitals and clinics, it might make sense to consider dramatic, earth-shaking alternatives like moving veterans to private providers and shuttering the VA. But they are not common. Indeed, as Washington Monthly reporter Phillip Longman has documented, the VA’s challenges are regional, not pervasive. Read More »

Top Rated Electronic Health Record Software Is Free

Dan Munro | Forbes.com | July 27, 2014

Earlier this month, Medscape published the results of their recent survey (here) which asked 18,575 physicians across 25 specialties to rate their Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. For overall satisfaction, the #1 ranked EHR solution was the VA’s Computerized Patient Record System ‒ also known as VistA. It was built using open‒source software and is therefore license free.

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