Zach Gonzales

See the following -

North Carolina's Central Regional Hospital Rolls Out VistA For Less Than $1 Million

Central Regional Hospital, a state psychiatric and medical facility located in Butner, North Carolina, has just completed a full-scale implementation of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system. The hospital, after three years of work, was able to self-implement and customize the fully-featured EHR at a cost of less than $1 million. The 398-bed hospital serves the acute and long-term inpatient mental health and medical needs of North Carolina citizens from 26 counties and employs more than 1,900 staff, including 50 doctors, 300 professional nurses, 700 nursing assistants, 40 psychologists, and 70 social workers. Central Regional Hospital is a major teaching site for 23 psychiatric residents per year from Duke University and the University of North Carolina medical schools.  It also provides training for medical students from both schools as well as psychiatry subspecialty fellowship training. Read More »

Oroville Hospital CEO Outlines How VistA Can Help Hospitals Survive the HITECH Act and Obamacare

Press Release | Oroville Hospital | February 21, 2014

Robert Wentz, President and CEO of Oroville Hospital, was one of the keynote speakers at the 28th VistA Community Meeting (VCM) in Sacramento, CA. Wentz's presentation, titled “Obamacare: a provider's perspective. An opportunity for VistA and private sector Hospitals,” outlined the clear advantages of using the VistA EHR as the United States moves towards a new health system based on Obamacare...Wentz detailed in his presentation why VistA is the best option for private hospitals in the US that want to stay in business under the new rules created by Obamacare. Wentz described the major changes currently taking place in the healthcare industry as a result of Obamacare, both in terms of financial issues as well as patient/consumer side...Wentz laid out how Vista coupled with a reshaping of how care is delivered can sustains hospitals through the changes that Obamacare will bring to the healthcare system...

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Oroville Hospital CEO Tells the Story of their Successful VistA EHR Self-Implementation at VistA Expo 2011

One of most exciting presentations at the VistaEXPO 2011 conference was given by Robert Wentz, Hospital Administrator and CEO of Oroville Hospital, a regional hospital in the beautiful mountains of Northern California. Oroville Hospital has achieved a whole series of milestones in close partnership with the VistA community. These range from a full implementation of VistA in the hospital and most of its 20 clinics, to the achievement of full meaningful use certification.

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Oroville Hospital Creates EHR Development Office to Continue Improving Its VistA Implementation

Press Release | Oroville Hospital | June 6, 2013

The extraordinary success of its EHR roll out and CPOE implementation has led Oroville Hospital to create of a software development office to continue enhancing and customizing its open source VistA EHR Read More »

Oroville Hospital's CMO Discusses VistA Implementation and CPOE - Part 1

Matthew N. Fine | Russ Cucina MD, MS | November 28, 2012

On October 16, 2012, Oroville Hospital turned on the CPOE component of its EHR, becoming the first individual US hospital to successfully adapt the Veterans’ Administration’s highly regarded electronic medical records system. How did a small, 153 bed semirural California hospital serving a mostly Medicare and MediCal population arrive at this place? Read More »

Oroville Hospital's CMO Discusses VistA Implementation and CPOE - Part 2

Matthew N. Fine | Russ Cucina MD, MS | December 10, 2012

This is the second in Dr Fine’s two-part series describing Oroville Hospital‘s implementation of VistA, the open-source EHR developed by the Veterans’ Administration. In his first post, he discussed their strategic approach and initial experiences with electronic documentation. Here, he picks up with Oroville Hospital’s CPOE go-live. Read More »

Oroville Hospital's EHR Implementation Cost Well Under Industry Average

Press Release | Oroville Hospital | January 23, 2013

CEO Robert Wentz addresses VistA Community Meeting in Sacramento where he updated the audience on the latest developments of their open source VistA implementation as well as detailed cost data. Read More »

Oroville Hospital’s Scheduler: a winning technology

On October 3rd, the winners of the US Dept of Veteran’s Affairs’ (VA) Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest were announced.  In second place was the OH Scheduler, which was the submission from Oroville Hospital in California.  I’d like to expand on their press release and provide some background to the technology that was used to develop their scheduler: it’s very much a case study of everything I’ve been talking about in my blog The EWD Files. As it happens, the OH Scheduler was first and foremost designed and developed for use at Oroville Hospital.  However, since their Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) is based on the VA’s VistA system, Oroville Hospital believed that it should also meet many of the key requirements of the VA and therefore submitted it as a contender for the VA’s competition. Read More »