VistA & 'Open' EHR Systems spread across West Virginia & Appalachia

The installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have continued to spread across West Virginia and many other states across the U.S.  See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in West Virginia and other Appalachian states.

Appalachia is a cultural region in the mountainous states of the eastern U.S. stretching from northern Alabama, though Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, to the southern tip of New York state.  – See Wikipedia.

In the state of West Virginia , all of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare facilities are continuing to use the well known, award winning VistA System. VA healthcare facilities (i.e. hospitals, outpatient clinics, nursing homes) using VistA include the:

• Beckley VA Medical Center
• Sutton/Braxton County VA Clinic
• Charleston VA Clinic
• Clarksburg VA Medical Center
• Franklin VA Clinic
• Greenbrier County VA Clinic
• Huntington VA Medical Center 
• Martinsburg VA Medical Center
• Logan VA Clinic
• Westover/Monongalia County VA Clinic
• Petersburg VA Clinic
• Tucker County VA Clinic
• Williamson VA Clinic
• Wood County VA Clinic

The following are other Federal, State, and local government healthcare facilities in West Virginia currently using other derivatives of the VistA system, e.g. RPMS, CHCS, OpenVistA, vxVistA, WorldVistA.

• Mildred Mitchell-Bateman State Hospital
• John Manchin Sr. Hospital
• William R. Sharpe, Jr. Hospital
• Lakin State Hospital
• Jackie Withrow Hospital  
• Hopemont Hospital
• Welch Community Hospital
• WV State Veterans Home
• CHNWV Rural Health Clinics

* Community Health Network of West Virginia (CHNWV)

See the map of all healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in Appalachia  and other states across the U.S.  VistA, or one of its derivatives, is one of the most widely used EHR systems in the country.

Finally, other popular 'open source' EHR systems in use across West Virginia and other Appalachian states include OpenEMR and OpenMRS. It has been estimated that there are more than 5,000 installations of OpenEMR in physician offices and other small healthcare facilities across the U.S. serving more than 30 million patients. Further, conservative estimates by the OpenEMR Organization(OEMR)  indicate that OpenEMR is installed in over 15,000 healthcare facilities around the world, translating into more than 45,000 practitioners using the system serving approximately 90 million patients.  As of 2012, OpenMRS was in use at over 100 facilities in more than 30 countries and had been used to record over 2 million patient records around the world. See map of OpenMRS installations.

Don't forget to read related articles about 'open source', 'open data', 'open access', and 'open standards' in West Virginia that have been posted on Open Health News (OHN).

Open Health News (OHN) plans on releasing a comprehensive report on the VistA Market in September with detailed information on VistA deployments state-by-state across the U.S., as well as in countries overseas, e.g. India, Jordan, Mexico, etc.  Also, Peter Groen, Senior Editor at OHN, will be presenting more on the subject and the associated VistA Installations GIS Map & Database v.1.0 at the upcoming OSEHRA Summit meeting.