Military Health Service May Opt to Replace VistA with Expensive, Proprietary Solution

WHAT:

This week, the Military Health Service is expected to decide on whether to dismantle its proven electronic health record (EHR) system, called VistA. Research demonstrates that VistA has improved VA productivity by six percent each year since 1999 and that, in a time of ever-rising healthcare costs, VA care has become 32 percent more affordable than it was in 1996. The organization has also achieved an unprecedented and unmatched prescription accuracy rate of more than 99.997 percent, making it a model for healthcare organizations everywhere. In fact, as private hospitals across the country strive to achieve the holy grail of automated, paperless environments (none has reached the mark yet), it is striking to note that every public VA hospital is already there thanks to VistA. Despite all of this, the Department of Defense (DoD) appears determined to systematically dismantle VistA and replace it with a proprietary solution that is expensive, difficult to implement and has limited interoperability with other systems. VistA advocates say the move makes little sense, economically or strategically--it is not in the best interest of our veterans, our working service men and women, or taxpayers who would have to foot the exorbitant bill.

Over the past 30 years, a community of open source users has developed VistA into a successful health care technology solution that works with existing hardware and software and preserves legacy IT investments in more than 130 regional centers across the country. So why is the military fixing something that isn't broken? Ironically, the military tried to do something similar by installing a proprietary EHR system, named the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application (AHLTA), in 2005. The solution proved to be expensive, difficult to install and incapable of working well with other systems. Now, it seems the DoD is heading down the same path again towards a "vendor-locked" solution that will cost billions up front and after implementation.

WHO:

Michael J. Doyle, president and CEO, Rick Jung, chief operating officer, and Dr. Edmund Billings, chief medical officer, all of Medsphere Systems Corporation.