Behavioral Health and the EMR: Why One Psychiatric Hospital Went Open-Source

Sigurd Ackerman, M.D., is president and medical director of Silver Hill Hospital, a 129-bed inpatient psychiatric hospital in New Canaan, Conn.  Like many leaders in behavioral healthcare, Dr. Ackerman found when seeking an updated electronic medical record (EMR) system for his standalone psych hospital (which is affiliated with the medical school at the Yale University School of Psychiatry), that the options were relatively limited, and in many cases not advanced enough for his institution’s needs. Dr. Ackerman spoke recently with HCI Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland regarding his organization’s experience on its EMR journey.

...So we looked again, and found the same thing all over again. But this time, I came upon the fact that there were now a couple of companies that had gotten the Vista system from the VA [the federal Veterans Administration health system], through Freedom of Information. And so I hired a very good consultant with whom I had worked in New York City a couple of times, and he had helped hospital systems go live over the years. And I was also the president of the hospital, so I had that experience as well. So he was a huge help and helped us vet the idea of the system, and Medsphere per se [the Carlsbad, Calif.-based Medsphere Systems Corporation], because I was very concerned about going with a new company, etc. But in the end, we liked what we saw.