Dear Mr Nohlgren, Although I initiated the thread on the story about the new enterprise resource application for the Veterans Health Administration, I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about "large health care systems and how they handle their billing, inventory control and asset management" to comment as you request.
The discussion on this list - the OpenHealth List - concerns open source software for health care systems, both large and small. I will forward your request to the membership of that list so perhaps someone will respond directly to you. Large information system projects of this nature are prone to failure, for many reasons. The reason I introduced the story into the list was because the VA, the largest health system in the United States, has had enormous success with its clinical information systems, which were created by staff of the VA, and are in the public domain thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. In this instance, the VA appears to have taken a different tack with software development, with disastrous results. Gary Kantor MD Case Western Reserve University University Hospials of Cleveland -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 6/15/2004 4:36 PM Subject: CoreFLS program at VA Hospital Mr. Kantor: I'm a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times. My colleague, Paul de la Garaza, and I have written several stories about CoreFLS and the VA. We are hearing, in some quarters, that they are now eight months into their rollout and some employees still have trouble making it work. This is not gospel, maybe much of it is griping from people who are institutionally resistant to change. But given a cost approaching a half-billion dollars, plus the disruption that occured down here with just one hospital, we are spending considerable effort to sort out whether these problems are typical startup ills or inherent and likely to continue when the project expands to 160 hospitals. Among other things, it appears to run on a WAN with people working live on one main server in Austin. Employees report slow response times. What's going to happen when 160 hospitals go on-line? I am looking for people knowledgeable about large health care systems and how they handle their billing, inventory control and asset management. Certainly the VA is enormous, but I imagine this sort of software challenge has been faced by others to some extent. We need to know what questions we should be asking. I stumbled across your thread on the internet on what I take to be a site frequented by people interested in health care and software development. Please give me a call, when you get a chance. Thanks, Steve Nohlgren 1-800-333-7505 x 8442 \ge The enclosed information is STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL and is intended for the use of the addressee only. University Hospitals Health System and its affiliates disclaim any responsibility for unauthorized disclosure of this information to anyone other than the addressee. Federal and Ohio law protect patient medical information disclosed in this email, including psychiatric disorders, (HIV) test results, AIDs-related conditions, alcohol, and/or drug dependence or abuse. Federal regulation (42 CFR Part 2) and Ohio Revised Code section 5122.31 and 3701.243 prohibit disclosure of this information without the specific written consent of the person to whom it pertains, or as otherwise permitted by law.
