HIMSS Analytics: Magazines are Chasing the Wrong Story

Modern Healthcare is running a non-story on whether it's appropriate for HIMSS Analytics VP Mike Davis to serve on the advisory board of for-profit vendor RMD Networks. They miss the point. Why is HIMSS running the for-profit subsidiary that Mike Davis works for in the first place?

HIMSS walks a fine line in equally representing the interests of its vendor and provider members. Some provider-side members (of which I admit to being one) would argue that maybe they've already stepped over that line: limiting educational sessions in their annual conference to steer attendees to vendor exhibits, controlling all hotel and meeting space with an iron fist to prevent competing events that would overlap with vendor functions, and serving as a de facto vendor trade association through vendor-benefitting advocacy and PR spinning.

For example, when studies were published suggesting (perhaps with less than convincing evidence) that computerized physician order entry might actually have compromised patient safety in specific hospitals, HIMSS attacked those hospitals and authors with immediate withering criticism, ridiculing their methodology and enlisting a physician debunker who also happens to be a vendor VP. Why did HIMSS need to take a position on an academic article? I was stunned at their display of arrogance and loyalty to their vendor members and I still am today. When it came time to see who Mom liked best, it was the bigger brother.

I have little doubt that vendors provide HIMSS with most of its money and perhaps even most of its members. They dominate the annual conference, sponsor just about everything that HIMSS sells, and no doubt demand a return on their sizeable investments, much of it in the form of access to the rest of us. Provider members should not be surprised that their $140 annual dues may not be the fuel that keeps HIMSS rolling over everything in its path. We get low dues in return for making ourselves available to vendors, much like bars offering free drinks for Ladies Night knowing that men will show up and pay full price for the privilege of offering perhaps unwelcome company.

Then, HIMSS goes and turns their highly annoying Solutions Toolkit into HIMSS Analytics. Anyone who received one of their survey calls knows what the Toolkit people were like: clueless, obnoxious, and persistent. They would ask endless questions about budgets and systems, then without letting you know, call people in other hospital departments: finance, for example. At my hospital, they even started pumping IT Steering Committee members for information. Armed with that information, vendors would demand your time. If you wouldn't provide it, you'd hear that vendors were calling your nursing people or physicians.

So why did HIMSS need to get even chummier with vendors? Why did it need a for-profit subsidiary? Was HIMSS not making it on already generous vendor subsidies? Was HIMSS board chair Dave Garets in need of a job? Was Steve Lieber scratching a misplaced entreprenuerial itch? They've tried to soften it up since, making it seem to be a more balanced offering that benefits providers and vendors equally. I'm not impressed. No matter how insightful Dave Garets may be or how many useful EMR studies they publish, their main reason for being is to be the telemarketing arm for vendors, using the HIMSS name to wedge a foot in your door and give companies enough information to do the same.

As much as I dislike the idea, maybe someone needs to be providing this service like Sheldon Dorenfest used to (equally annoying people, but at least you know they were not necessarily your friend and their business model was clear.) I'd like it much better if it wasn't HIMSS. In some small measure, my dues and my time back when I did participate in the survey helped underwrite this venture, even though it's used against me. That's why I started refusing to talk to their survey people. Do you tell telemarketers how much money you make, what household goods you plan to buy, and what goods you already own, knowing that you'll just get that many more obnoxious calls from aggressive salespeople who buy your information? I don't.

Whatever boards Mike Davis sits on doesn't compromise the integrity of HIMSS. HIMSS Analytics has already done that.