The IT VistA gets larger

Here are a few quick bits of news from last week about federal electronic health-record system incentive payments.

The 24th meeting of the WorldVistA community wrapped up a three-day run Sunday at University of California Davis. WorldVistA is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2002 to promote the use of an open-source version of the VistA system outside the Veterans Affairs Department, where the VA has been developing the EHR for more than 30 years.

Open-source maven Roger Maduro reported from the meeting that Oroville Hospital donated $150,000 to WorldVistA. Its members contributed or contracted for the production of code modifications needed to certify WorldVistA EHR software as capable of meeting federal meaningful-use criteria and to help IT staffers at 133-bed Oroville configure the system to their needs.

Oroville is one of six U.S. hospitals not part of the 153-hospital VA system that has deployed an open-source variant of VistA and received Stage 1 EHR incentive payments, according to a list released last week released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the CMS.

Three of those installations were by Medsphere Systems, two by the Indian Health Service with its variant of VistA, and one was attributed to WorldVistA.

Midland (Texas) Memorial Hospital, the first non-governmental U.S. hospital outside the VA to adopt VistA, didn’t make the initial ONC/CMS list, which counted only those federal EHR incentive payments made through November 2011. Midland joined the ranks of recipients in early January this year, qualifying under both the Medicare meaningful use and Medicaid “adopt, implement, upgrade” criteria, according to an Odessa, Texas newspaper account.

Midland began its VistA install in mid-2005.

VistA wasn't the only system not developed by a commercial vendor on the ONC/CMS payment list, however.

The Boston Medical Center and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center also had home-grown complete EHRs qualifying for payments.

Congratulations to all early adopters and meaningful users.

Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn.