Modern Healthcare has an an article (registration required) on the Underground Railroad reunion: ‘Members of the Underground Railroad, pioneer developers and defenders of the clinical computing system now in use at more than 800 healthcare sites within the Veterans Affairs Department, will reunite next month, coinciding with a meeting of federal health executives at the Institute of Medicine in Bethesda, Md…The reunion banquet is scheduled for 6 p.m. Feb. 8 at the Positano Ristorante Italiano in Bethesda, Md.. The banquet is open to activists in the Underground Railroad as well as others who might be interested in its history. To RSVP by Friday, Feb. 1, contact Munnecke at tom@munnecke.com.’
Category Archives: VistA
Veterans Affairs Healthcare System No. 1
ABC news has a video and transcript : “Socialized medicine may sound un-American, but in fact, it’s exactly what we provide to our American heroes — the more than 5 million armed forces veterans and their families.
They get health care that the government both pays for and delivers. It’s the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, and according to health care experts such as Phil Longman — it’s become one of the best health care systems in the country.
PR Filling Up Fast: Introduction to WorldVistA EHR System Administration
Space is filling up fast for the not-for-profit Harris County Health Information Cooperative(HCHIC) sponsored, intensive, vendor-neutral Educational Conference: “Introduction to WorldVistA EHR System Administration”. December 7th-9th, 2007 in Houston, Texas. 10% of the proceeds benefit the not-for-profit WorldVistA organization with the rest of the proceeds benefiting the not-for-profit HCHIC. The hotel has guaranteed the room rate at $89/night until November
29th only. More information and enrollment information here.
Diabetic VistA — The First Amputation v. 2.0
Scott Shreeve has a in-depth history and analysis of the recent VA announcement of a proprietary lab system in a Free/Open Source stronghold: “…So what happened? How could the VA allow a critical, integral pat of VistA languish for more than a decade? What are the implications of the decision to wholesale components of VistA to proprietary software vendors like Cerner? What does this mean to the other aging parts of the system (Pharmacy, Radiology, etc) as well as some of the new, still functional innovations (BCMA, CPRS, etc)?…”
Hardhats: Four Major Strategic VA Missteps
From the hardhats list on Google Groups: “I have been watching some of the steps VA has taken over this past year with regards to management of health IT systems that I would consider to be major strategic missteps. The following are some informal observations.”
Top “10 or more” Reasons the VA Should Protect the Public Domain Nature of VistA
The VA’s superb record in turning around its health system to become one of the best in the world in quality and cost management has not escaped attention. The fact that the VistA software, training and documentation is freely available as public domain is making the DNA of this transformation available to health systems everywhere. The Cerner press release announcing the VA’s intention to integrate a proprietary laboratory component into the public domain VistA software ecosystem has the potential if carried out to severely hamper the strategic leveraging of the VA transformation across the US and the rest of the world.
Your Health Care Quality, Privacy, Security and Tax Dollars Are at Stake
A stark future awaits American health care if the Veterans Affairs (VA) system and Cerner is allowed to go forward with announced plans to replace the VA’s successful public domain laboratory software, in need of update, with a proprietary one. The VA would give large amounts of cash that would greatly assist a single proprietary company in dominating EHR software in both the public and private sector. A free, thriving EHR ecosystem will be destroyed and replaced with a monopoly or cartel at great expense in which the quality, privacy and security of such software is a trade secret, un-examined and un-examinable. If this is allowed, it could lead to Americans essentially renting their own medical data back from the Cerners of the world at great expense.
VistA – The First Amputation
In an unprecedented announcement, the VA has signed a 9 year deal with Cerner to replace laboratory information system at 150 hospitals and 800 clinics.
This is both a highly concerning but also highly provocative announcement given its implications. Which side of the sword you will feel as a result depends on your perspective.
PR: Introduction to WorldVistA EHR System Administration Education Conference Dec 7-9th, 2007
Press Release: “The not-for-profit Harris County Health Information Cooperative (HCHIC) is sponsoring an intensive, vendor-neutral Educational Conference: “Introduction to WorldVistA EHR System Administration”. This three day weekend education event December 7th-9th, 2007 will be held in Houston, Texas. This conference will be limited to 20 participants and has a low introductory rate. 10% of the proceeds benefit the not-for-profit WorldVistA organization with the rest of the proceeds benefiting the not-for-profit HCHIC. More information and enrollment information here.
Eight Hour Sacramento VistA Failure Last August
Modern Healthcare’s Joseph Conn has an article on a large 8 hour VistA outage at the Sacramento VA facility that occurred on August 31st, 2007. Some believe that a VA security reorganization centralizing control at the expense of reliability has gone too far: “Davoren said there has been a welcome consciousness-raising within the VA about privacy and security issues, but heightened security measures also have had drawbacks, including difficulty scheduling teleconferences and other snafus. �For example, to fully comply with security requirements on our examination-room PCs, we must log out of both a clinical application such as our Computerized Patient Record System and the Microsoft Windows operating system each time we leave the room even for a moment, yet it may take as long as 12 minutes to log back on when we return. Given a 20- or 30-minute visit with their veteran patient, the clinician is thus forced to choose to �do the right thing� for either the patient or the system, but cannot do both, �the bad news is that centralization of physical IT resources to the (regional approach) has directly led to more system downtime for individual medical centers than they have ever had before, resulting in hundreds of simultaneous threats to the safety of our veteran patients.�