I was at the National Managed Care Congress a few weeks ago. One of the subjects discussed was Well Point paying for EMRs for some of their physician groups. I spoke with the gentleman at the end and mentioned open source a a possible way forward for them.
I'll dig up the info I have.
Pat
All,
I have received many replies to the below scenario.
This was meant as a "what-if" to gauge the reception of the physician members of these three mailing lists. A biased but informed crowd, no doubt.
The point was to quickly determine if it was possible get six sites to
agree to pilot an open source application if they only had to buy their
hardware and bear the internal costs in time and change management for
implementation.
In other words, if there they did not have to pay for training or consultant implementation and evaluation time. Would they be willing to install, use and participate in evaluation of an open source EHR.
The response indicates that in the US (where I meant to target the
question) the answer is a definite yes.
So, for a grant of $100k from an insurance company, pharmaceutical
company or government agency. The entire costs of implementing and
evaluating an open source EHR could be covered in six pilot sites.
What do others think of this approach?
Cheers, Tim
On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 08:16, Tim Cook wrote:
If you are a physician working in a small practice (1 - 10 physicians) would you please reply yes or no to the below scenario and question?
If I told you that I would install an open source EHR application, train
all of your users and an application administrator at no cost to
you.......
Would you then purchase a reasonable amount of equipment and IT
infrastructure needed. Then would you participate in evaluating the
overall effects of using this EHR at 6 month, 1 year and 2 year
intervals?
Thanks,
