By Alice Lipowicz
The Indian Health Service is promoting
its legacy information technology system for managing medical and
business information as a low-cost alternative for other health
programs, especially in the public sector.
The Resource and Patient Management System has been in development and
use at the service for more than 30 years, and much of the software is
in the public domain. The RPMS Electronic Health Record graphical
interface is a more recent development that is being used at more than
190 IHS facilities in the United States.
The system has been adapted for use by the Community Health Network of
West Virginia and by the Telecommunications Information Policy Group of
the University of Hawaii. The IHS said it will highlight those programs
at its upcoming Indian Health Information Management Conference in
Arizona on May 10.
“As a proven, low-cost, and publicly available health information
system, RPMS is an attractive solution for health programs outside of
Indian country, especially in the public sector,” the conference agenda
states.
The community health network states on its Web site that it is the first
organization in the country to successfully implement an adapted
version of the RPMS for community health centers.
“The RPMS is a robust and time-tested electronic health care information
system for cost-effective management of clinical, administrative, and
patient encounter-related financial information,” the agency said.
Because RPMS is fully integrated, data that is captured and entered at
various service points is available to all associated software
applications. This assures that all medical information, regardless of
its source — including lab results, medications, and complaints — is
available to clinicians using the RPMS system, the agency said.