Rural Area Medical Volunteer Corp (RAM) uses OpenEMR and registers over 6,000 patients in 2.5 days using a single 1.7 Ghz server accessed by 25 workstations. “At several points during the clniic we were registering a new patient every 15 seconds.” The quotes below were provided to Pennington Firm by volunteers at RAM.
“We used OpenEMR for registration at RAM Expedition #400, held at the Wise County Fairgrounds on July 23-25 and it worked flawlessly. Paper based registration and encounters were used this year, as backup, in case of equipment failure (which didn’t happen).”
“OpenEMR ran on an 1.7 Ghz single channel IDE OpenBSD server with 25 workstations constantly feeding the server. Over the duration of the clinic, server utilization never peaked above 15% The data flowing over the network was protected by 1024 bit OpenSSL encryption and other security measures.”
“This year, network access was via wired connections in the registration building. From the registration building the network was wirelessly bridged to 4 other wired locations on site. We plan to double the number of workstations next year and leverage direct connection to the existing wireless network to give providers and support staff immediate access to information from any location on site.”
“OpenEMR based registration was open for approximately 24 hours over the 2 1/2 day period. Registration throughput was over 100 patients per hour. At several points during the clinic we were registering a new patient every 15 seconds.”
“We have consulted the OpenEMR database many times after the clinic for patient contact information for follow up after the clinic.”
“Here is a blurb from the www.ramusa.org web site that gives patient totals….”
“‘In a 2 1/2 day period from July 23rd to July 25th, 902 RAM volunteersprovided free medical care in a total of 6026 patient encounters [representing 2342 unique patients] at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Virginia. Dentists extracted 3291 bad teeth and filled 932. General medical doctors gave 3398 consultations which included extensive lab procedures, pharmacy and telemedicine. 104 women received Mammograms. There were 1078 eye examinations with free prescription eyeglasses, many of them made on site in the RAM mobile eyeglass lab.'”
“‘The total value of free care delivered in 2 1/2 days was a staggering $946,326.00′”
“There are several pictures of the 2004 Wise County RAM clinic at www.ramusa.org. I encourage you to visit the web site to see what RAM looked like. The picture on the home page under the flags shows about 20% of the buildings, vans, etc. involved.”