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agger
November 10th, 2005, 08:49 AM
I'm sorry if all of you have already seen this before, but this is incredible IMHO:

The world's most advanced and possibly only complete health care system is Open Source, free and Free, and developed by the US Veterans Administration (and is called VistA).
A derived project is called WorldVistA, trying to bring free and Free
health care system to the entire world.

Here's a quote from this project's home page at SourceForge (http://worldvista.sourceforge.net/):

The OpenVistA project will help its adopters eliminate [license] fees by allowing VistA to run on the GT.M programming environment and the Linux operating system, both of which are open source and free. By reducing licensing costs, OpenVistA frees up money to be spent on medicine, medical professionals, and other resources more likely to directly improve patient care. Like all WorldVistA projects, the OpenVistA project not only provides adopters with the software itself but also transfers knowledge and expertise and builds long-term mutual support relationships between adopters and the rest of the worldwide VistA community.

Here's an interesting article on VistA and the VA from Washington Monthly:
The Best Care Anywhere (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.longman.html)

And here's the VA's official CPRS/VistA demo site with more links and a working demo (Windows only, alas!):

VistA/CPRS demo (http://www1.va.gov/CPRSdemo/)

I apologize if this is not interesting for this forum - my own comment is w00t! An open source health care system, saving lives every day, ready for everyone to adopt, and which scales from a single GP practise to
the entire VA with 25 million patients.

If Mark wasn't already busy supporting education, this would be an ideal project for anyone with his kind of possibilities to promote:-)

agger
November 13th, 2005, 05:34 PM
Here's a very informative quote from the above-mentioned article from Washington Monthly:


The VistA system also helps to put more science into the practice of medicine. For example, electronic medical records collectively form a powerful database that enables researchers to look back and see which procedures work best without having to assemble and rifle through innumerable paper records. This database also makes it possible to discover emerging disease vectors quickly and effectively. For example, when a veterans hospital in Kansas City noticed an outbreak of a rare form of pneumonia among its patients, its computer system quickly spotted the problem: All the patients had been treated with what turned out to be the same bad batch of nasal spray.

Developed at taxpayer expense, the VistA program is available for free to anyone who cares to download it off the Internet. The link is to a demo, but the complete software is nonetheless available. You can try it out yourself by going to http://www1.va.gov/CPRSdemo/. Not surprisingly, it is currently being used by public health care systems in Finland, Germany, and Nigeria. There is even an Arabic language version up and running in Egypt. Yet VHA officials say they are unaware of any private health care system in the United States that uses the software. Instead, most systems are still drowning in paper, or else just starting to experiment with far more primitive information technologies.

Stormy Eyes
November 13th, 2005, 05:43 PM
Nice to see that a little of the money I fork over to the IRS gets spent on something useful.

mstlyevil
November 13th, 2005, 06:02 PM
If you have ever used the Veterans health care system like I have you would know it is second rate at best. I had to be put on a waiting list for care I needed immediately and had to wait 3 months for it. I could have died in that time but luckily I didn't. If I had health insurance at the time, I would have had treatment within days of diagnosis. Open Vista is just more propaganda to make the Veterans health system look good in the press but does not change it's way of administering health care to the nations veterans.

Stormy Eyes
November 13th, 2005, 06:16 PM
If you have ever used the Veterans health care system like I have you would know it is second rate at best.

The fact that it's a government program automatically makes it second-rate, but I was trying to focus on the positive for once: that the government was coming up with something halfway useful instead of just spying on American citizens and bombing brown people.

mstlyevil
November 13th, 2005, 06:20 PM
The fact that it's a government program automatically makes it second-rate, but I was trying to focus on the positive for once: that the government was coming up with something halfway useful instead of just spying on American citizens and bombing brown people.

Oh, ok, my bad. I just didn't want anyone getting the impression that it led to first rate health care. I wished it did because if anyone deserves it it is the veterans that do.

agger
November 13th, 2005, 06:28 PM
The Washington Monthly article I quoted states that the Veterans hospitals were in a sorry state until the mid-90's, where they had to reinvent themselves in order to survive and then successfully turned themselves into a national benchmark of health care by focussing on measurable progress.

I must admit that that and other, similar articles about the VHA are my only sources of information here - I have no personal experience with the VHA as health care provider.

But the VistA system as such sounds eminently usable - I understand they're rolling it out in 200 hospitals in Mexico just now (just to cite an example).

Stormy Eyes
November 13th, 2005, 06:44 PM
Oh, ok, my bad. I just didn't want anyone getting the impression that it led to first rate health care. I wished it did because if anyone deserves it it is the veterans that do.

I think the veterans deserve a bit more than "first-rate" healthcare. If anything, they should be getting a lifetime tax exemption if they've been wounded in combat.

blastus
November 13th, 2005, 06:52 PM
I don't think long waiting lists is reflective of inefficient health care information systems technology. While that may be part of it, there are more significant factors like a shortage of doctors/physicians, not enough beds, etc... I've heard the U.S. has a multitiered discriminatory health care system that caters to the rich. In Canada, we have long waiting lists also, but the health care system is based on the following principals in the Canada Health Act (1984):

public administration: the administration of the health care insurance plan of a province or territory must be carried out on a non-profit basis by a public authority;

comprehensiveness: all medically necessary services provided by hospitals and doctors must be insured;

universality: all insured persons in the province or territory must be entitled to public health insurance coverage on uniform terms and conditions;

portability: coverage for insured services must be maintained when an insured person moves or travels within Canada or travels outside the country; and

accessibility: reasonable access by insured persons to medically necessary hospital and physician services must be unimpeded by financial or other barriers.

Basic health care coverage in Canada is basically free except in a few provinces (like Alberta) that charge less than $50/month. I've heard that in some U.S. states, basic coverage costs upwards of $400/month. I think one can blame that on how the U.S. government spends taxpayers money as the U.S is like 2 to 10 times more prosperous per capita than Canada.

blastus
November 13th, 2005, 07:06 PM
I think the veterans deserve a bit more than "first-rate" healthcare. If anything, they should be getting a lifetime tax exemption if they've been wounded in combat.

I've seen lots of news reports about stuff like this. There was one report a couple of years ago that showed a homeless Vietnam veteran in crutches begging on the streets. In another report, they showcased how the Pentagon did not cover the medical expenses to treat soldiers that had been wounded in the Iraqi war. When they returned home the Pentagon sent them a huge bill. One such soldier was homeless. There have been cases like this in Canada too where a someone comes home from serving the military only to find out that they owe the Canadian government several thousand dollars.

mstlyevil
November 13th, 2005, 07:22 PM
The Veterans system has come a long ways from the early nineties to provide much better care than they did in the past. It still has a long way to go to be at the level the insured have in this country. Everytime I had health insurance, I recieved care immediately. Those time I was without insurance, I had to wait and then I was not given the options I would have had about treatment that the insured recieve. I am greatfull I got some care because many around the world just live without any at all.

The health care system in the United States is sometimes misunderstood by the Canadians. The rich and the insured both recieve about the same quality of care. Most people in the United States are insured either by an employer or they purchase their own. The poorest also have access to the health care system through several Federal and State plans developed to cover them. They also usually recieve decent treatment and choices because some doctors make more off of them than they do the rich because of fraud and kickbacks.

The group that gets left out is the working poor and the lower middle class. This is about between 10 to 15% of the population who either cannot afford health coverage or their employer does not provide it. This is the group that needs to be addressed and some how covered. When they do recieve health care, it is they that get the second rate coverage and care because they must rely on free clinics or a system like the Veterans Healthcare system.

A one size fits all system like Canada's is not the answer for everyone. We need insurance reform that would make it possible for these people to be covered and recieve the same quality care that everone else recieves without relying solely on the govrnment to provide the healthcare for them. Govenment care leads to waiting list, long lines and a shortage of Doctors and beds. Also government provided care would be less cost effective and efficient than a private solution.

YourSurrogateGod
November 13th, 2005, 10:55 PM
The Veterans system has come a long ways from the early nineties to provide much better care than they did in the past. It still has a long way to go to be at the level the insured have in this country. Everytime I had health insurance, I recieved care immediately. Those time I was without insurance, I had to wait and then I was not given the options I would have had about treatment that the insured recieve. I am greatfull I got some care because many around the world just live without any at all.

The health care system in the United States is sometimes misunderstood by the Canadians. The rich and the insured both recieve about the same quality of care. Most people in the United States are insured either by an employer or they purchase their own. The poorest also have access to the health care system through several Federal and State plans developed to cover them. They also usually recieve decent treatment and choices because some doctors make more off of them than they do the rich because of fraud and kickbacks.

The group that gets left out is the working poor and the lower middle class. This is about between 10 to 15% of the population who either cannot afford health coverage or their employer does not provide it. This is the group that needs to be addressed and some how covered. When they do recieve health care, it is they that get the second rate coverage and care because they must rely on free clinics or a system like the Veterans Healthcare system.

A one size fits all system like Canada's is not the answer for everyone. We need insurance reform that would make it possible for these people to be covered and recieve the same quality care that everone else recieves without relying solely on the govrnment to provide the healthcare for them. Govenment care leads to waiting list, long lines and a shortage of Doctors and beds. Also government provided care would be less cost effective and efficient than a private solution.
Imo, we should turn the VA department into a simple money distribution system. Simply give a check (the money that they deserve) to every Veteran and let him/her do what they want. Imho.