Comments on: News 3/13/09

By: Mike Doyle

Mike Doyle — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:40:17 +0000

There is good news here. Medsphere has taken what is certainly one of the most reliable and proven EHR’s available today, the VA’s Vista solution, and created OpenVista. Think of Medsphere as Red Hat meets HIT. As an Open Source healthcare information solution provider, we’ve enhanced Vista to efficiently function in non-governmental hospitals. Our initial client, Midland Memorial Hospital, is one of the initial 13 HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 EMR hospitals in the US. Medsphere achieved this in conjunction with Midland for 1/3 the time and 1/3 the price of the proprietary vendors. Hospitals that want to take advantage of the stimulus money have begun to form a line outside of our offices because, as an Open Source company, we do not charge anything for the software and can quickly make clinical improvements through the use of best practice templates and care guidelines. We make our money by charging subscription fees that almost every hospital can afford in their operating budget. Our subscriptions help defray costs for support, maintenance, upgrades and inclusion in the Healthcare Open Source Ecosystem (www.medsphere.org). There is an alternative to proprietary systems with Medsphere and OpenVista.

By: p_anon

p_anon — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:44:07 +0000

Classic Office 2003 menu in Office 2007: http://lifehacker.com/5166887/ubitmenu-brings-the-microsoft-office-2003-menu-back-to-office-2007 – I haven’t used it so don’t vouch for it, but LifeHacker is generally reliable, so you can assume it works.

Alternately, someone added a search bar to the ribbon, which searches commands in the ribbon itself, to help you find the ‘new spot’ for doing things.

Also, if you remember the exact keystrokes, Office 2007 does support the Office 2003 keystrokes.

And to be clear, you’re perfectly in the right to complain. I’m just raising awareness of the workarounds, which may or may not work for you.

–
Meanwhile, on the Open Source front, we can demand all funded development be open source, meanwhile the vendors don’t have to completely convert. Once funding stops, they can take the source and make all further changes proprietary.

Believe it or not there’s a benefit to having source available, even if the ultimate goal (open source product w/ critical mass) isn’t realized. It’s still good to have source available, even to reuse for common tasks.

By: CDiff

CDiff — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:12:34 +0000

RE: Congress looking at hospital CEO salaries. Inga, this looks like a case of salary envy since each takes home a puny $174K. Regardless of who is “in power”, you have to love the theatrics involved year in and year out to come up with a script as to why Congress will not bring up a discussion to elimnate their own automatic cost of living increases mandated since 1989 (this January a tidy $4,700 bump).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090312/ap_on_go_co/congress_pay;_ylt=AtPQMkSPTrC4REfq8vv73gUDW7oF
With Mr. H.’s mention of Pink Floyd, he would understand we’re all just bricks in the wall for Congress.

By: Room for both

Room for both — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:09:04 +0000

RE: HITObserver

“I’ve used Red Hat and Ubuntu Linux, Open Office, etc. The only thing that seemed to stick for me was FireFox and Skype” I think dismissing the millions of open source Unix installs by saying you don’t use them isn’t much of an argument. FYI, Skype is free-to-use but not open source.

“I’d like to see everyone who champions the open source idea delete their Mac and Windows Operating Systems, delete their MS Office, and help lead by example.” I don’t see how supporting open source requires abstaining from all proprietary software. Where open source make sense, use it. Where proprietary software makes sense, use that instead.

By: The Alchemist

The Alchemist — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:53:12 +0000

Perhaps this comment may appear naïve to bombastic but meant to be more sarcastic than ultraistic or is that altruistic. The $timulus Bill “Entitlement” for HIT may move the commodity of individual health record through an indifference curve thereby establishing a utility need for personal health repository.

Electricity is a utility that magically appears at the flip of the switch on the wall. We as consumers don’t get involved with the power grids, transmission lines, maintenance, etc. In other words, we are indifferent to the cost, vendor or economy of scales of electricity provided by the local monopolized power company.

You get where I’m going with this IT Guy. I have been picking winners & losers of medical instrumentation and information systems for over thirty years and determined by the nature of marketing and commercialism, “you win some and lose some.” EMR? They are all over priced, limited to gluttonous in features, intuitive to difficult to use and unfortunately must fall back on my gut intuition, “you get what you pay for” and this have been proven more and more to be inaccurate.

eClinicalWorks, almost sound like a utility looks more enticing as a utility item than as a true commercial product. You buy one; you use it; you throw it away as a disposable except for the priceless data elements. Maybe we should all be investing in thumb drive stock. Look at the sale of light bulbs. You use electricity by the minute as a utility and must buy the light bulb in order to receive some of the benefits of electricity. And then there are toasters, blenders, power equipment, computers, solar panels…

You still following me IT Guy?