Larger hospitals have learned the lesson that electronic health record (EHR) systems can keep an organization up and running with lower costs and greater collaboration between doctors and clinical staffs to deliver better patient care.
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, physicians who adopt "meaningful use" of an EHR system qualify for $44,000 or more in Medicare incentives. There are several stages to meaningful use certification and about 80 percent of hospitals have not even met Stage 1 yet.
But what about the smaller hospitals that may not have much of a budget to work with? A new study has found that smaller rural hospitals tend to lag behind their larger counterparts significantly, 10.7 percent of small hospitals having a basic EHR in 2011, while 43 percent of large hospitals did.
Medsphere Systems Corporation, a provider of open source EHR solutions and services, believes it has a solution, and today announced that its OpenVista EHR system has been chosen by Oklahoma's Stilwell Memorial Hospital, a small community medical center, to help it meet meaningful use requirements.
Stilwell will use the OpenVista system for transforming its paper-based records to EHRs, as well as provide clinical support, according to a company press release.
"For community hospitals like Stilwell Memorial, safety net care providers, the OpenVista EHR meets a need that the larger healthcare technology companies simply don't,” said Alan Adams, CEO at Stilwell Memorial. “Medsphere's track record and unique ability to quickly provide clinical transformation under an affordable business model is unmatched."
Stilwell Memorial will now become a full participant in Medsphere's Healthcare Open Source Ecosystem, where clinicians, administrators and other OpenVista EHR users share system enhancements, upgrades and best practices. As the Ecosystem continues to grow, additional contributions will improve care for patients at participating facilities.
Medsphere's OpenVista EHR was originally created and developed as VistA EHR by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The company’s new offering, OpenVista, is based on open source technology, which allows other applications to be easily integrated into it to allow a smooth flow of information between different systems.
The Veterans’ Health Administration, which has used Medsphere’s VistA as a primary clinical support tool for over 20 years, has found that the system “virtually eliminated adverse drug events and boasts rates of preventive care that exceed Medicare averages in almost every statistical category.”
"Medsphere is very happy to welcome Stilwell Memorial to our community of hospital partners focused on ensuring improved care through access to affordable EHR systems that benefit all patients, not just those fortunate enough to live near big, wealthy hospitals," Irv Lichtenwald, Medsphere president and CEO, was quoted in the press release. "The team at Stilwell understands that cooperation and affordable information-sharing improve both healthcare and healthcare IT. It's this evolving attitude and level of collaboration that will keep healthcare from bankrupting the nation."
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
