Monday Morning Update 01/30/06

From Anonymous: "SIS is being sold next week to a venture capital investor. They've been on the block for some time and found no takers among the industry buyers. Eclipsys and McKesson turned it down flat and pretty much every HCIT co with a pulse received a pitch. The VC will flip it for quick bucks (why else would they buy it?). Deal will probably end up around 2x revenues - lower than other recent HCIT deals." That's the rumor I've been hearing, too. Unlike other recent acquisitions that were strategic in nature, this one will be, as Jon Phillips described in my interview with him, a "financial acquisition," meaning the buyer's interest is making money directly rather than augmenting an existing HIT product line. Many thanks for the report.

The other rumor going around is that Misys will acquire Picis very shortly. It would be odd if the two big surgery system independents were snapped up almost simultaneously after all these years (thanks to GE and Allscripts, no doubt.) As Milwaukee's Best says, "Misys, Picis. Kind of has a ring to it, doesn't it?" From Anonymous: "Misys insiders suggest it is an emergency departmental applications firm. There are only a few options for them." Picis with its Ibex ED product being one, of course. From another Anonymous: "I'm sure that Misys will underperform with the alleged acqisition as they have with the others (Per Se, etc). The parent company is in trouble and Skelton continues to lead the healthcare division to results that underperform market growth. You know the formula. If you can't generate strong organic growth, then acquire it." I really appreciate these tips, all of which were quickly and anonymously sent my way via the Rumor Report form to your right, languishing with a come-hither look and desperately craving your skilled attentions.

One thing I know about Misys: they want to win the HISsies. I wondered why voting nearly doubled in a short time yesterday afternoon, then a reader forwarded me the "please vote for us" e-mail they were sending everywhere. That's OK with me. If they can get a lot of votes by whatever above-board means, then that's fine. And speaking of HISsies, I'll be closing them down Wednesday, February 1. Several categories are too close to call, so if you want to drum up corporate support like Misys, this is your last chance to vote. Someone will be named Best and Worst vendor next week and you control their fates.

And another thing about Picis: the "I Am Mr. HIStalk" buttons just arrived there and they will graciously distribute them to all takers during the HIMSS conference. Thanks to them for the help. Please make sure to stop by and wear a button so I can gain some anonymous fame (is that an oxymoron?) and maybe pick up a few new readers.

From Anonymous: "Isn't it funny that the only two privately-held, non-advertising major industry players -- MEDITECH and Epic -- consistently fare well on your non-advertising-accepting, independent blog. Yet, all of the ad-driven magazines, which accept millions of dollars from Cerner, McK, etc. and receive nothing or near-nothing from MEDITECH and Epic, always glorify the big public vendors to the point of near-ignoring MEDITECH and Epic. As Mick Jones would say -- you can draw your own conclusions, but I'll tell you mine......." Just to disclose completely, I'd accept their sponsorship, but they aren't buying. To anyone new here, there's no such thing as an independent magazine that mails out free copies to all takers and makes money only from vendors' ads. Think they're going to come out with a Cerner expose'? Please. Reformatted press releases and rosy customer stories is all that separates the ads from each other, probably just as well since the "reporters" are often kids who've never worked in any part of the industry.

Providence Health System is getting a ton of publicity (none of it good) for the theft of electronic records on 365,000 patients from unencrypted backup tapes stored in an employee's car at his home, apparently encouraged by policy for disaster recovery purposes. I have to disagree with the criticism that they shouldn't have waited nearly a month to admit the theft publicly. Thieves aren't rocket scientists, so I would have done the same thing, hoping the tapes would turn up in a dumpster somewhere unrecognized as anything interesting. Electronic records make both unauthorized viewing and mass theft easier than with paper records, so obviously we need to come up with better security practices. Not just hospitals, obviously, since plenty of non-healthcare examples have made the papers lately.

Speaking of sponsors, thanks to mine: Inside Healthcare Computing, Medicity, Healthcare Growth Partners, and eScription. Feel free to join them.

I keep hearing about an extended UMass system downtime, which always provides good "lessons learned" to everyone else. If you're an insider willing to share a few details off the record by e-mail or otherwise, let me know.

Listening to now: Patty Hurst Shifter, which in addition to a not-bad pun for a name, kicks out some straightforward, big-guitar, all-American rock and roll. Sounds a little like the Gin Blossoms or Refreshments to me. Followed by Green Carnation, always excellent prog-metal.

Brave, contrarian stock analysts raise ratings on McKesson's stock, coincidentally right after the compnay blew through the earnings expectations of the last set of analysts. I can't wait until these geniuses issue their Super Bowl pick next Monday.

Stock update: the Palomar Healthcare Technology Index (symbox: ZHI) is up just over 9% in the past month.

Buried in otherwise sucky numbers from Misys: healthcare is doing OK, with profit up 15%.

Antoine Agassi, former Spheris CTO and WebMD SVP/CIO, joins Tennessee's eHealth Coordinating Council, which is spending a lot of federal and state money on RHIO stuff.

Sanjay Shah, former CIO of Porter Hospital, is accused of terrifying staff and refusing to allow his assistant to use the restroom. He's suing them for breach of contract related to his 2004 firing, which he accepted rather than the offered 12-month resignation severance of $160K. He claims the real reason for his termination was his accusation of Medicare and Medicaid fraud by the hospital.

HIMSS pesters the President to once again promise that most Americans will have an electronic health record within the next 10 years in his upcoming State of the Union speech. After all, he has nothing else to worry about except terrorism, spying on citizens, failed foreign policy, a weakened military, a dwindling gobal image, and threats of energy shortages. On the other hand, maybe EHRs will slip in there because it's one of few feel-good issues that don't alienate anyone. Why not ask hospitals and physicians to make that pledge instead of the President?

Maybe it already exists and I don't know about it: can't someone draw up a "minimum data set" of data that every provider should be able to deliver electronically? Without that, all of those RHIOs won't have anything to interoperate. I agree with Denni McColm - keep people out of those RHIO gabfests who can't check off what they have available to share.

In Texas, Alliance Hospital's lawsuit against BulldogIT goes to mediation. The hospital says BulldogIT failed to deliver promised services in a software contract. The company countersued for non-payment. Nothing is mentioned on the company's website, where the latest news is from July 2004. You may remember them as the acquired of Per-Se's Business1 product a couple of years ago, where it apppears to have sunk into even more obscurity than it enjoyed under Per-Se. They previously fired president and founder Ken Perry (who also founded IASIS) and sued him. They aren't on the HIMSS exhibitor's list this time, probably just as well since their booth was unmanned every time I passed by last year.

CIO Field Report

• Hospital type: Academic, Multiple Hospital Group, >800 Beds, Midwest.
• IT Operating Budget: >$20 million.
• Most important IT projects now underway: Computerized patient record with CPOE and medication administration, medical device integration, point-of-care computing.
• Systems you'll buy within three years: RFID with tracking capabilities, staff scheduling, materials purchasing "aids."
• Best application vendors: No one, nobody, not in the foreseeable future.
• Worst application vendors: McKesson, Siemens, and the rest of them.
• Hottest IT skills in the market: Clinical and business process knowledge, complex interfacing, project management. 
• Hottest people in the industry: Brailer (wrong person at the right time,) Cliff Dodd, Judy Faulkner.
• Trends really heating up: Vendor milestone-based contracting, consumer driven healthcare, consolidation (vendors, providers, insurance.)
• Trends cooling off: CPOE.
• Comments: Keep up the great work. This is the best blog on the WWW.
  

CIOs, IT directors: complete the online CIO Field Report and I'll send you the HIStalk Yearbook 2005. Thanks. And thanks to Shahid (The Healthcare IT Guy) for the online form.

Pittsburgh's UPMC gets 8.5 million federal tax dollars to develop a disaster response system, pork brought home by Congressman John Murtha. His statement (or was it a question?) to UPMC's president during the press conference: "These guys are not just going to do a study, they're going to get something done. Right?" One disaster that should be responded to is that of Pittsburgh's economy, crumbling due to non-taxpaying yet entreneurial and highly profitable organizations like UPMC and several universities, none of which pay the bills like the long-gone steel mills that fouled the air but lined the coffers with their taxes. Maybe it's the city's punishment for allowing local legendary two-fisted, beer-and-a-shot Iron City Beer go down the tubes (or maybe for letting Pitt destroy hallowed ground Forbes Field for a campus expansion and replacing it with one of the least memorable public structures in history, Three Rivers Stadium, now thankfully reduced to rubble itself.) You can't even get an Iron in Heinz Field since they sold off the rights to mass marketed swill Rolling Rock.

A father who spent a month beside the Duke University Hospital bed of  his 14-month old son brings back 18 brand new laptops for patient rooms in the blood and BMT unit, courtesy of his foundation and HP. 

Two hospital workers are fired for leaking information to the media on the medical condition of the president of the LDS church. One was terminated because another employee e-mailed the information to reporters using her Internet login. Says the former employee: "I highly regret it but it's a common thing. As much as IHC would like to say here are your passwords and please don't give them to anybody else, it happens all the time. I think a suspension would have been fair, I knew they were going to reprimand me maybe even take away my internet login."

Billing fraud charges, coupled with state and federal investigations, roll heads at New Jersey's University of Medicine and Dentistry, including that of its president and 25 senior staff.

News, rumors, anything that would help me pass the time pleasurably: e-mail me.