U.S. To Offer Free Electronic Records Software Systems to Doctors
Posted on: Tuesday, 20 September 2005, 03:00 CDT
In an effort to expedite the implementation of electronic health records on a national level, Medicare said it planned to announce that it would give doctors, free of charge, software to computerize their medical practices, reported The New York Times. An office with five doctors could save more than $100,000 by choosing the Medicare software rather than buying software from a private company, officials said. The program begins next month, and the software is a version of a well-proven electronic health record system, called Vista, that has been used for two decades by hospitals, doctors and clinics with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Medicare will also provide a list of companies that have been trained to install and maintain the system. Installing Vista would cost $10,000 to $12,000 for an entire medical practice. The federal government paid hundreds of millions of dollars to develop Vista, and now uses it in the Veterans Administration's 1,300 inpatient and outpatient facilities, which maintain more than 10 million records and treat more than five million veterans a year. No company owns Vista so anyone can modify and enhance it.
Copyright KSR Publishing Sep 2005
Source: Healthcare Purchasing News
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