Big Payback For VA Health IT

The Veterans Affairs Department has invested more than $4 billion on its Veterans Health Information System and Technology Architecture (VistA) during the last two decades. But the payback the department has received has pretty much exceeded those costs, Health Affairs Journal reported in its April issue.

As of 2007, VistA's savings and benefits totaled about $3 billion more than the amount VA has invested in it, according to the Health Affairs study, which was conducted by the Center for IT Leadership at Partners Healthcare in Boston.

Since Dr. David Blumenthal, national coordinator for health information technology, hung out at Partners Healthcare before taking his current job, one would think that this study would serve as an impetus to make VistA -- available as open source software -- a building block for a national health record system.

Ahh, but why use free government developed software when all the health IT companies on the planet have stuff that sells for around $40,000?