Is the VA Killing VistA? Say It Ain't So Jun 10, 2008, 23 :15 UTC (4 Talkback[s]) (6434 reads) (Other stories by Anne Zieger)
"As longer-term readers know, this newsletter has praised the VA's efforts with open-source EMR VistA since we first got started.
"VistA is, in short, a remarkable accomplishment that performs better than virtually every commercial installation available. Every office visit, prescription, and medical procedure is recorded in VistA's database, allowing doctors and nurses to update themselves on a patient's status with just a few keystrokes. In 1995, patient records at VA hospitals were available at the time of a clinical encounter only 60 percent of the time. Today it is 100 percent. Some 96 percent of all prescriptions and medical orders, such as lab tests, are now entered electronically. The national comparison is more like 8 percent..."
