Robert Wentz

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OSEHRA 2012 Open Source EHR Summit Opens to Capacity Audience - Live Blog

The 1st Annual Open Source EHR Summit & Workshop opened to a capacity audience of nearly 400 participants today at the Gaylord National Conference center at National Harbor in Maryland today This is the conference held by Open Source Electronic Health Records Agent (OSEHRA) organization, the custodial agent of the code for the U.S Department of Veteran's Affairs' (VA) open source VistA EHR. The conference has a packed agenda with more that 30 speakers. We will be blogging live from the conference with a few bits and pieces and will follow up with a more extensive set of articles later on.

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28th VistA Community Meeting to Feature Top VistA Leaders

Former VA CIO Roger Baker, Oroville Hospital CEO Robert Wentz, and the VA's current CIO, Stephen Warren, will be addressing the 28th Vista Community Meeting (VCM) in Sacramento, CA in what promises to be one most important conferences of the VistA community to date. The conference, which takes place January 17-19 at the UC Davis School of Medicine campus in Sacramento, CA, will feature a stellar cast of Health IT leaders. In addition to Baker, Wentz, and Warren, keynote conference speakers include Dr. Seong Ki Mun, Chairman of OSEHRA, Howard Hays, CIO of the Indian Health Service (IHS), Theresa Cullen, Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Stephen Oxley, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the Central Regional Hospital in North Carolina, and Denise LeFevre, CIO of Oroville Hospital.

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28th VistA Community Meeting: VistA Community Coming Together

Years of efforts dedicated to unifying the VistA community as well as VistA code development effort bore fruit during the 28th VistA Community Meeting (VCM) on January 17-19 in Sacramento, CA.  This year's conference became a transition to a closer collaboration between the VistA community, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the non-profit OSEHRA organization. In effect, the conference was more of a workshop where the participants briefed each other on the latest technical developments as well as strategic efforts to increase collaboration.

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HIMSS14: Annual Conference and Exhibit Opening with Open Source Session

The 2014 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition opens today in Orlando, FL. (February 23-27).  The more than 37,000 attendees can notice an important and growing breakthrough for the health IT industry.  For the first time, HIMSS invited OSEHRA to hold a four hour session today beginning at 12:45 pm, Convention Center 203C.  The day’s formal OSEHRA session, among the traditional industry businesses, marks a breakthrough recognition for the emerging benefits and impacts that open source solutions and their many new models of business are generating around the globe. 

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Hospital builds open-source eRx module from VistA

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | December 11, 2012

Oroville (Calif.) Hospital plans to release as open source an electronic prescribing software module it developed to use with its open-source version of VistA, the Veterans Affairs Department's electronic health record system. Read More »

North Carolina's Central Regional Hospital Rolls Out VistA For Less Than $1 Million

Central Regional Hospital, a state psychiatric and medical facility located in Butner, North Carolina, has just completed a full-scale implementation of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system. The hospital, after three years of work, was able to self-implement and customize the fully-featured EHR at a cost of less than $1 million. The 398-bed hospital serves the acute and long-term inpatient mental health and medical needs of North Carolina citizens from 26 counties and employs more than 1,900 staff, including 50 doctors, 300 professional nurses, 700 nursing assistants, 40 psychologists, and 70 social workers. Central Regional Hospital is a major teaching site for 23 psychiatric residents per year from Duke University and the University of North Carolina medical schools.  It also provides training for medical students from both schools as well as psychiatry subspecialty fellowship training. Read More »

Obamacare Still Stumping Medical, Non-Medical Professionals

Laura Urseny | OrovilleMR News | January 20, 2014

Two speakers at last week's Northstate Economic Forecast Conference followed the same path when it came to describing the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Read More »

Open Source Electronic Health Records: A Cost Solution For Hospitals

Zina Moukheiber | Forbes | August 24, 2012

When Oroville Hospital decided to digitize its patient medical records three years ago,...chief executive Robert Wentz...did something almost unheard of for a health care executive: he went open source. As the saying goes in this conservative industry, no one gets fired for picking Epic. Wentz’s decision is not for the squeamish or the straight-laced. It forced long-time hospital administrators with tight schedules and deadlines to loosen up and collaborate with a network of free agents—open source programmers who voluntarily support a publicly available electronic health record called VistA...

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Oroville Hospital

Oroville Hospital is a community hospital in Northern California dedicated to providing the finest personalized health care. It offers a medical home, with a wide range of integrated services from prevention through treatment to wellness. In order to provide the highest quality medical care to the community, Oroville Hospital chose to self-implement the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system.

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Oroville Hospital 'Open Sources' eRx VistA Module

Press Release | Oroville Hospital | December 10, 2012

Oroville Hospital, the first hospital to self-deploy VistA in the United States, is releasing the ePrescription module it developed to provide electronic prescribing capabilities to the world-renowned EHR in the private sector

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Oroville Hospital CEO Outlines How VistA Can Help Hospitals Survive the HITECH Act and Obamacare

Press Release | Oroville Hospital | February 21, 2014

Robert Wentz, President and CEO of Oroville Hospital, was one of the keynote speakers at the 28th VistA Community Meeting (VCM) in Sacramento, CA. Wentz's presentation, titled “Obamacare: a provider's perspective. An opportunity for VistA and private sector Hospitals,” outlined the clear advantages of using the VistA EHR as the United States moves towards a new health system based on Obamacare...Wentz detailed in his presentation why VistA is the best option for private hospitals in the US that want to stay in business under the new rules created by Obamacare. Wentz described the major changes currently taking place in the healthcare industry as a result of Obamacare, both in terms of financial issues as well as patient/consumer side...Wentz laid out how Vista coupled with a reshaping of how care is delivered can sustains hospitals through the changes that Obamacare will bring to the healthcare system...

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Oroville Hospital CEO Tells the Story of their Successful VistA EHR Self-Implementation at VistA Expo 2011

One of most exciting presentations at the VistaEXPO 2011 conference was given by Robert Wentz, Hospital Administrator and CEO of Oroville Hospital, a regional hospital in the beautiful mountains of Northern California. Oroville Hospital has achieved a whole series of milestones in close partnership with the VistA community. These range from a full implementation of VistA in the hospital and most of its 20 clinics, to the achievement of full meaningful use certification.

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Oroville Hospital Named One of the Winners of the VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest

Press Release | Oroville Hospital | October 4, 2013

Oroville Hospital was named one of the three winners of the innovation challenge issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to help the agency develop a new medical appointment scheduling application for its award-winning Electronic Health Record (EHR), VistA. Oroville was declared a winner based on the open source, web-based scheduling program it is currently developing and testing at its medical facilities in Oroville, California. Read More »

Oroville Hospital rolls out CPOE for their open source VistA Implementation

Press Release | Oroville Hospital | June 25, 2013

Oroville Hospital has gone live with CPOE on VistA, the open source EHR developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Read More »

Oroville Hospital's CMO Discusses VistA Implementation and CPOE - Part 1

Matthew N. Fine | Russ Cucina MD, MS | November 28, 2012

On October 16, 2012, Oroville Hospital turned on the CPOE component of its EHR, becoming the first individual US hospital to successfully adapt the Veterans’ Administration’s highly regarded electronic medical records system. How did a small, 153 bed semirural California hospital serving a mostly Medicare and MediCal population arrive at this place? Read More »