Two Medical Clinics Choose OpenEMR (LinuxMedNews)

Posted May 23, 2004 17:46 UTC (Sun) by msmelov (guest, #11243) [Link]

This is the first time I hear of this application. My father runs 4 small
medical centers. He has been running a scheduling program that some
slacker didn't finish (my mother finished it, it was written with VB and crystal
reports -- yuch, not to mention it needs virus prone Windows) but has been
doing billing the old fashioned way. He recently looked into some fancy
proprietary software solutions, but those require fancy IBM iServers (that's
what the company offers - no other choice of hardware) if he wants to
serve it himself (which is what he wants since that is cheaper than paying to
rent a server). The IBM server with the software and all their setup fees
comes to about $20,000 per medical center ($80k total). IIRC the
company's support includes 5 free visits within the first year, and then $1000
per visit. Also every major software upgrade is an additional $3000. I believe
that includes the physical upgrade service.

Now I'm looking into this app to see if it will server his needs -- if it does
then I can just build a nice Dual Opteron server with either gentoo (my fave)
or SuSE 9.1 Pro (yast kicks ass). I can setup all the necessary LAMP
components myself. This will cost him under $2000 per medical center ($8k
total). Because it is my father's business I will build everything in my own
time, but I will charge a meager $30/hr to upkeep the server. If I can't do it
myself I have plenty of friends who wouldn't mind earning a little extra doing
it.

I won't even bother doing a TCO study, I think the winner in this case is
obvious.