Monday Morning Update 08/21/06

I had another "Phony News Issue" welling up inside me, but I figured those aren't for everyone, especially for the oh-so-serious folks who don't want me to be me. So, I didn't do an e-mail update for it and thereby raise expectations for its humor quotient. If you want to read it, you can look here. 

Picis files initial paperwork for an $86 million initial public offering.

Cerner clinical and imaging applications go live in Dublin, Ireland.

What should I do next with HIStalk? The poll over to your right has some options. Let me know what you think. I'm not sure I have time for any of the choices, but we'll see.

KU Medical Center videoconferences pathologists into the OR, allowing the surgeons to continue their cases without breaking scrub to confer with the pathologist. That's one of those "why didn't we think of it earlier" ideas that's cool, easy, and cheap.

The health ministry of the Cantabria region of Spain hires iSoft for a large IT project. Brave, or just not watching the headlines?

Stanford brags on its leadership in bioinformatics and computational biology, probably justifiably.

Neither Canadian nor American doctors are likely to tell patients when they make a mistake, but their reluctance is due to medicine's "culture of perfectionism" and not litigation fears, according to a new study. Docs in Canada aren't any more likely to fess up, even though malpractice cases are heard by a judge and not a jury, pain and suffering awards are capped, punitive damages are rare, and unsuccessful litigants pay the doctor's legal bills.

The Wisconsin hospital where a 16-year-old labor patient died of a medication error has been cleared after making changes as demanded by the several state and federal agencies that swooped in after the story made the papers, but the nurse who was involved is gone, presumably fired and likely to lose her nursing license. If you feel safer now, dream on. One word describes a hospital with only mistake-free nurses: empty.

Kaiser Permanente turns on online patient access to portions of their electronic medical record. They ramped that up pretty quickly and I bet patient expectations from other providers will follow.

Newt Gingrich drops some sound bytes at an appearance in Gainesville, Florida. "We've turned health care into a rental car. No one ever washes a rental car. No one takes responsibility for it ... We shouldn't be worrying about whether kids will be labeled 'fat. This is too important. Diabetes is the biggest single driver of health care costs."

Marshall University partners with a local software firm to create Medical Information Systems Technology, which was introduced with a pre-fab acronym (MIST) that suggests they should have chosen a shorter name if that's what they wanted. The new venture will market add-on cardiography software that claims to reduce preterm preeclampsia.

Imagine if they were trying to turn a profit: Pittsburgh's non-profit UPMC makes $577 million for the year, to which they coyly refer as "excess margin."

Odd: a consultant for University of Michigan's $75 million CPOE project is named COO of a public relations company. She's also a Higher Thinker (caps theirs, whatever that means) and apparently invented the Internet.

I thought I'd share a couple of nice comments about HIStalk, mostly to stroke my own ego. From a CEO: "I have no gossip to send but have been remiss in telling you how much I like your publication. I’m not quite sure how I stumbled across it, but I am glad I did. I appreciate your efforts and look forward to each email that tells me a new post was added." From a vendor executive: "Your blog is a primary news source for us as we keep track of our industry. I don’t know how you keep your quality blog going with a full-time job, but please know that the effort is appreciated!" From a vendor SVP: "THANK YOU for the consistent and passionate effort you put into the site. The CEO interviews are priceless. I can’t imagine how much of your personal time it takes each week, but it’s my only *must* read.  Please keep it coming!" Now I'm a humble guy who was raised poor, listens to bluegrass music, flies the flag proudly, and considers barbeque to be its own food group, so I really appreciate those kind words. I know I've said it before, but when I'm sitting in an otherwise empty room staring at an otherwise empty computer monitor (actually two of them now!) that kind of encouragement fires me up to do it all over again. Thanks.

An Australian drug company "loses" millions, leading to its stock delisting and the resignation of its CEO. The company blames a Lawson upgrade.

Allscripts shares drop after an analyst questions the stock's current value and the company's potential competition from new market entrants. 

Speaking of stock analysts, you ought to see how many of them read HIStalk regularly, and that's just counting the ones coming in from identifiable Internet domains. What I've noticed about them: (a) they don't sponsor; (b) they don't say thanks, but (c) they keep coming back. Maybe I'll make up some ridiculous story just to see if I can influence the stock market. Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel!

News, rumors, or guest articles you might want to write for HIStalk: e-mail me.