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Open Source Medical Billing Software
tr0tt3r writes "There is a thriving community of people who are devoted to using Free and Open Source Software to run Medical Practices. While there are many projects that are capable of tracking patient data and scheduling functions, there has been no way to run a Doctors office using GPL software because there was no GPL Medical Billing. This is mostly due to the difficulty of handling HCFA 1500 alongside EDI formats like X12.Recently
several different projects have banded together to create FreeB the first GPL medical billing system."
I recieved a quote for a WinOMS CS install in the $18,000 range last January. This was for an office of 5 people. We ended up turning it down and going with their local competitor's $15,000 offer, instead.
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You do not understand how vertical markets work at all.
A software vendor who designs billing software for doctors, public utilities, car dealership management, etc doesn't give a shit about open source software. The software is generally accounting software that a 2nd year CS student and and accounting major could write and some sort of interface to send data to an EDI system (for billing and receivables) and whatever the accountants want to audit the books.
Plus, 1/2 of the time the "hard part" (ie EDI interface) is just some library licensed from another vendor.
We're not talking about complicated problems here... and collaborating with other developers doesn't add too much value.
The vertical market business model is to lock your customer into your software and violate him with license and support costs. And it works. If a small doctor's office gets 16,000 transactions per year, than an $8,000/yr licence "only" costs $0.50 per transaction.
If you were using open source software, the doctor could go to anybody for support... and the vertical software vendor would go out of business.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Just wanted to point out debian-med. A customized debian distribution cenetered around the tasks of a medical practice.
Actually there is all kinds of incentive for doctors to choose an open source medical/billing database.
The number one is cost and ease of integration with other systems. Not all doctors are rich. Some doctors run their own private practices -- and frankly I think we need more of those doctors, and less of the "How many patients can I see in fifteen minutes?" kind.
The cost of running your own private practice is huge, and any way to cut the administrative costs would be a great boon. FreeB would cut the costs in two ways, one because it's free-as-in-beer and two because it's open source and therefore easier to integrate with other systems.
Seriously, I used to date a guy (IANAW) who ran his own private practice. It's great, he gets about a half hour with every patient, he handles all his own emergency calls and he leaves a few timeslots open each day for emergency visits. It's everything you want in your doctor, but he really did bitch about the absurd costs of running Microsoft everything, as well as the absurd costs of the medical database he had to run on top of it.
An Active Directory server plus a SQL Server plus Office plus two desktops, that's a ton of bullshit for a sole proprietor to be paying for. There wasn't an open source alternative for me to recommend at the time, but I'm glad there is now, it might encourage more like him to go solo.
This project can really fill a need for low-cost, small medical practices.
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