Department of Veterans Affairs Awards Purchased Care Contract to DSS, Inc. Team
The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) has awarded the Purchased Care Health Care Claims Processing solicitation to Document Storage Systems, Inc. (DSS).
Juno Beach, FL–October 9, 2009–The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) has awarded the Purchased Care Health Care Claims Processing solicitation to Document Storage Systems, Inc. (DSS). The Veterans Administration, where medical appropriateness and or distance from care are an issue, contracts medical services for our nation’s Veterans. DSS, Inc. combined resources with partners Complete Medical Systems, MEGAS, Unicor Medical, and VistA Revenue Solutions to create the Fee Basis Claims System (FBCS). FBCS transforms the highly labor intensive, manual process of adjudicating Fee claims into a seamless electronic workflow.
FBCS converts paper handling into a technology process that allows for automated workload assignments, automated claim scrubbing, and smooth claim flow, hands-free acceptance of EDI claims for processing and superior data capture for reporting. These new capabilities translate into faster claims processing, better management tools, increased productivity and overall reduction of fee payments. FBCS will play a key role in improving the payment timeliness of veterans’ purchased care claims.
ABOUT DSS, Inc. - DSS, Inc. is a 20 year old company that specializes in healthcare IT solutions. DSS is a valued supplier of integrated enhancements to the VA’s VistA system since 1994, and is now offering products that are compatible with the Indian Health Services RPMS and the Department of Defense’s health care systems. They are releasing their core commercial software, vxVistA, as Open Source under the Eclipse Public License to meet the needs of non-VA users. DSS, Inc. also offers add-on products including behavioral health, clinical decision support, dental electronic records, document imaging, and revenue cycle solutions. For more information concerning DSS, Inc., please visit www.dssinc.com.
About Complete Medical Systems, Inc, is a software company that has specialized in health care software development since 1983. CMS, Inc. is currently providing billing, clinical, and administrative solutions to both government and commercial clients in the form of enterprise wide solutions for the VA as well as practice management software and a CCHIT certified Electronic Medical Record System to medical practices nationwide. ABOUT MEGAS, LLC and Unicor Medical, Inc. - are software development firms with more than 30 years of experience in developing software for the healthcare industry. The current software applications are marketed under the Alpha II brand and are designed to unify coding, compliance and reimbursement.
About Vista Revenue Solutions Corporation (VR$) – VR$ was incorporated in 2005 with the primary business objective to provide VistA-integrated solutions (software and services) that enhance the VA’s ability to meet and exceed revenue cycle performance metrics.
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DSS, Inc. Signs Spectron Corp. as a Distribution Partner
Document Storage Systems, Inc. (DSS) today announced that Spectron Corp. of Tulsa, OK has become its first distribution partner.
Juno Beach, FL–September 29, 2009–Document Storage Systems, Inc. (DSS) today announced that Spectron Corp. of Tulsa, OK has become its first distribution partner. Spectron will redistribute vxVistA, DSS’ free and open source version of the VistA system and resell DSS’ proprietary add-on products. DSS will be providing sales and implementation training to the Spectron staff.
According to William Grosso, President of Spectron, “We are pleased to become a commercial partner with DSS for their vxVistA EHR product line. This partnership provides access to the best, most proven EHR available. We’re looking forward to the introduction of vxVistA EHR products to the community hospitals of the United States.”
Mark Byers, President of DSS, added: “Spectron is an experienced company with a great reputation. We know they’ll do an exceptional job of helping customers take advantage of all that vxVistA has to offer.”
ABOUT SPECTRON Corp. - Spectron Corporation has been successfully providing healthcare information solutions to commercial hospitals since 1969. They are an integrated HIS system provider that is experienced with hospital start up engineering and provisioning of entire turnkey HIS systems and networks including conversion from installed competitive HIS systems. Ongoing training and support is provided on site or remotely from their ASP center. For more information concerning Spectron Corp. please visit www.spectronco.com
ABOUT DSS, Inc. - DSS, Inc. is a 20 year old, 200 person company that specializes in health IT solutions. They are the foremost supplier of integrated enhancements to the VA’s VistA system and are now offering products that are compatible with the Indian Health Services RPMS and with the Department of Defense’s AHLTA. They recently released their core software, vxVistA, as Open Source under the Eclipse Public License. vxVistA is the complete FOIA VistA stack that DSS has modified and enhanced to meet the needs of non-VA users. Their add-on products include complete dental, behavioral health, revenue cycle solutions and clinical decision support. For more information concerning DSS, please visit www.dssinc.com.
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DSS, Inc., Announces Open Source Version of vxVistA EHR Framework, Joins Open Health Tools Foundation
Leading VistA developer release includes commercial enhancements for non-U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Providers
Juno Beach, FL–January 7, 2009–DSS, Inc. the leading developer of enhancements to VistA, the VA’s award winning electronic health record, announced it will open source the code for its vxVista® an enhanced version of VistA designed for the commercial market. In this major development, DSS, Inc. has effectively removed the greatest obstacle to collaboration in the VistA community by providing their enhanced version of VistA under a commercially friendly open source license that can be used to unite the VistA community.
Mark Byers, President and CEO of DSS, Inc., said that vxVistA® is being released as open source software at a critical time in this country's history. Byers stated, 'the health care crisis is one of the major challenges facing this country,” adding that “VistA deployments in the private sector have demonstrated that VistA can provide private hospitals and clinics with the highest quality Electronic Health Record in the shortest amount of time for a fraction of the cost of competing products.” According to Byers, “We can lower the cost of health care while significantly increasing the quality of that care by implementing VistA across the United States.”
A large number of health care leaders in the United States also believe that VistA provides the ideal framework for rapidly implementing electronic health records across the country. Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) introduced the Health-e Information Technology Act (HR 6898) last fall that lays out a clear strategy in this regard.
As an integral part of its actions, DSS, Inc. has joined the Open Health Tools (OHT) Foundation. Open Health Tools is the leading umbrella non-profit organization for open source projects in healthcare. Skip McGaughey, Executive Director of Open Health Tools said “We are very excited about DSS joining OHT and making such a significant contribution.” McGaughey added, “The VistA technology has been used by millions of people and has established the benchmark for the industry.” Speaking on behalf of OHT, McGaughey emphasized that “We are looking forward to helping bring this technology to a world wide community.”
DSS' Mark Byers said “we are looking forward to working with Open Health Tools.” Byers explained, “we had been looking to open source vxVistA® for the past two years. Open Health Tools presented us with the kind of approach that we were looking for as well as a commercially-friendly license that members of the VistA community can work with.” The vxVistA EHR framework will be part of the OHT Forge project.
vxVistA® will be released under the Eclipse Public License (EPL). The Open Health Tools (OHT) Foundation is modeled after the Eclipse Foundation, one the most successful open source projects today. Using the Eclipse Public License all members of the “VistA community”, including competitors, will be able to use vxVistA® as the core framework for their products and innovations.
Peter Groen, a leading advocate of VistA in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) since its inception, applauded DSS' move. Mr. Groen, who was the National Director of the Health IT Sharing Office within VHA, prior to his retirement, said “This is an extremely important move. DSS has tremendous credibility and a long successful track record with VistA. As the Open Health Tools (OHT) Foundation and its key members get behind this, major advances and new markets will open up for VistA and the many companies supporting it.” According to Groen, “This becomes a key step in moving ownership of VistA into the larger 'open community' where it belongs and can be free to continue growing and adapting to meet the needs of the ever changing world of health care.”
In addition to being released under the Eclipse Public License, vxVistA's framework will follow that of the Eclipse Foundation. Companies will be able to collaborate to build products by programming and packaging plug-ins, modules and extensions to vxVistA's core framework. There were several considerations that factored into DSS, Inc. and Open Heath Tools choice of the Eclipse framework for vxVistA®:
- Focus on Value-Add: Using the VistA ecosystem framework, VistA vendors, users, and contributors will be able to focus on their value-added enhancements rather than wasting time re-inventing the base code.
- Lower Development Costs: Contributors will have lower application development costs enabling them to get to market faster.
- Lower Risk of Adoption: Users will face a significantly lower risk of adoption than proprietary, closed-source applications as there will be an entire ecosystem and community behind vxVistA®.
- Enhanced Testing and Debugging: vxVistA® code is based on the latest version of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ VistA, which has been continually updated with patches and enhancements by DSS, Inc. As open source code, vxVistA® will benefit from a much wider audience of programmers to more thoroughly test and debug it.
- Compatible Programs: Programs using the same vxVistA® framework will be compatible through the use of plug-ins and modules, as multiple plug-ins and modules can be used with a single instance of the framework.
- Potential for Widespread Use: vxVistA’s compatibility with other framework programs will lead to its widespread use by hospitals, clinics, medical practices, and large numbers of programmers.
Open Health Tools CEO Skip McGaughey comments, “open source is all about collaboration and is increasingly being recognized as the currency in the new economy. This project is all about meeting an industry need and promoting standards to solve complex interoperability problems in healthcare.”
About DSS, Inc.
DSS, Inc. offers vxVistA, an enhanced version of the award winning software that runs the Veterans Health System. vxVistA provides documented improvements in both the quality and cost of health care. In addition to complete ambulatory EHR and HIS functionality, DSS offers integrated, comprehensive behavioral health and dental modules. DSS, Inc. employs its special expertise by providing VistA integration solutions for over a dozen third party software applications including clinical monitors and patient accounting systems. DSS also offers professional services including installation, support and training for vxVistA users.
Open Health Tools is an open source community with a vision of enabling an ubiquitous ecosystem where members of the Health and IT professions can collaborate to build inter operable systems that enable patients and their care providers to have access to vital and reliable medical information at the time and place it is needed. Open Health Tools will generate a vibrant active ecosystem involving software product and service companies, medical equipment companies, health care providers, insurance companies, government health service agencies, and standards organizations.
