'Open Source' VistA Installations in Louisiana and other Mississippi Basin states

The installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems has continued to spread across the U.S., including many of the states that border the Mississippi River. For example, see the following map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source world renowned VistA electronic health record (EHR) system.

The Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 31 U.S. states that lie between the Rocky Mountains and Appalachia. States that border the Mississippi include Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

To better illustrate what this means, let's look at just one of these states in the Mississippi Basin. In the state of Louisiana, all of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare facilities are continuing to use the award winning VistA System. VA healthcare facilities (e.g. hospitals, clinics) using VistA include the following sites:

• Alexandria VA Medical Center
• New Orleans VA Medical Center
• Baton Rouge VA Clinic
• Bogalusa VA Clinic
• Fort Polk VA Clinic
• Franklin VA Clinic
• Hammond VA Clinic
• Houma VA Clinic
• Jennings VA Clinic
• Lafayette VA Clinic
• Monroe VA Clinic
• Natchitoches VA Clinic
• New Orleans VA Clinic
• Shreveport VA Medical Center
• Slidell VA Clinic
• St. John VA Clinic

The following are other Federal, State, and local government healthcare facilities in Louisiana currently using other derivatives of the VistA system, e.g. CHCS, OpenVistA, vxVistA, OHUM VistA, WorldVistA.

• Fort Polk Army Community Hospital
• National Hansen’s Disease Center
• 2nd Medical Group - Barksdale AFB
• Beauregard Memorial Hospital

* Take the time to read the following news article posted on Open Health News (OHN) about the  Implementation of VistA at Beauregard Memorial Hospital in Louisiana. Several other installations of VistA in local community hospitals are currently underway.

VistA, or one of its derivatives, is just one of several widely used EHR systems in the country. Another popular 'open source' EHR systems being used in Louisiana is OpenEMR. It has been estimated that there are more than 5,000 installations of OpenEMR in physician offices and other small healthcare facilities across the U.S. serving more than 30 million patients.

Related News: Last month, the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) announced that they will be implementing the 'open source' VistA system in over 300 healthcare facilities across the State of New York. Healthcare provider organizations in many other states are exploring similar efforts.  Read the OHN Hot News Article

For the past year, Open Health News (OHN) has been working hard at assembling all the data regarding VistA implementations around the world and creating maps showing where VistA is implemented. The results of this research will be published in a Special Report, aptly titled "VistA: The EHR of Record", next month. Stay tuned for upcoming announcements about the release of this report and to go about purchasing your own copy of it from OHN.

Oroville Hospital, in Northern California, self-implemented VistA in their 153-bed hospital and 15 clinics and is now winning all kinds of awards for improved quality of care. Oroville has spent less than $7 million on the EHR component of their implementation, approximately a quarter of the lowest price paid for proprietary EHR systems implemented in other nearby hospitals.