Monday Morning Update 09/12/05

From Thomas S.: "Let's cut the hype...   Kevin Fickenscher is no doubt a smart and articulate fellow. BUT there is nothing in Kevin's interview that demonstrates 'thought-leadership' ? I didn't hear any new or innovative thoughts?"

From Thought-Leader Wannabe: "After reading your interview with Kevin Fickenscher, I formed an opinion based on the interview and the few times that I have heard him speak, as far back as nine years ago. I kept checking HISTalk to see if others had similar opinions about the piece and found none had been posted. I'm glad to see that Thought-Leader-To-Be spoke up. I am in complete awe and always overcome with insane jealousy when I see individuals such as Kevin string together cliches, talk in generalities, describe a ethereal "vision", work closely with companies who use them as an "independent" experts (but ply them with travel to exotic locations, stipends, honorariums, and plenty of A-List exposure), and carve out a wonderful livelihood moving from one impressive title to another, when I struggle to find anything actionable or concrete in what they say a mere five minutes later. As for Kevin, he most certainly did not stay long enough to walk the talk at Aurora Healthcare, and I suspect, but do not know, that he moved on from other positions when the catchy phrases and cliches were identified as such when heard for the hundredth time."

I appreciate Kevin's taking time for the interview. I'm running the above comments because I think it's fair for HIStalk readers to state their opinions. Are you an industry leader willing to be interviewed? Let me know. I sure didn't see many interviews done until I started running them in HIStalk. I still like to think I do them better than the copy-cats, but then again I'm hardly unbiased.

The Gilligan trivia question stirred up some interest. The answer was Willy (Gilligan's first name) although it's a bit more complicated. So, here's a follow-up from a reader. Where did the show's producers get the name SS Minnow?

I mentioned that I'm not a Gilligan fan (not believable, too predictable, and sorry, I have a thing about "outdoor" scenes plainly filmed on sound-stages, like when the horse clopping echoes off the papier mache' scenery in cheaply made TV Westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza.) My list of favorite TV shows, in approximate order: St. Elsewhere, The Andy Griffith Show, Police Squad!, Frasier, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and The Larry Sanders Show (HEY noooowwwwww.) So, here's an easy Andy Griffith trivia question. In Episode 77, Man in a Hurry (quite possibly the finest 30-minute program ever aired on American TV) what song do Andy and Barney sing together on the Taylor front porch that brings tears to the eyes of Malcolm Tucker?

A money-losing 131-bed hospital will pay McKesson $10 million to replace all its IT systems, citing the usual pie-in-the-sky estimates of quick ROI and improved quality.

Question some wide-eyed newbie asked me the other day: how do you know when something an IT vendor says is suspect? My answer: if you hear it in a room with soft chairs, guys in suits, and a pastry tray, it's probably a lie.

Former Eclipsys region president Bruce Brandes is named SVP of Sales for OB software vendor E&C Medical Intelligence.

Matthew over at The Healthcare Blog mentions a recommendation from a billing company's CTO to "put up servers that are running open-source PM/EMR software" and also get healthcare IT companies to help Hurricane Katrina victims. This is a heartfelt suggestion, but given that installing hardware and software is maybe 1% of a clinical implementation project, unlikely to help. Let's say Cerner donates a broad set of Millennium apps preinstalled on a server. New Orleans will be dried and Girls Gone Wild will be taping in the French Quarter again by the time you'd get everything configured and working.

Goodbye, CIO, hello CPO, says a thought-provoking article. "... corporations and their CIOs alike had better start swimming, or expect to sink like a stone ... My guess is that over the next few years, many people working in IT will face a simple choice. One option is to get involved with business processes in a much more explicit way. The other? Pack your bags and move to Bangalore, India, because that is where your job is going to go ... So it is bye-bye chief information officer, hello chief process officer (CPO), and get ready for a very bumpy ride ... It's not your father's IT shop any more, and business process management skills now outweigh yesterday's technical skills ... When was the last time you met a 12 year old who told you he or she wanted to grow up to be an engineer? When Bill Gates goes to China, students hang from the rafters and scalp tickets to hear him speak. In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears ... We need a Bill Cosby-like president to tell all parents the truth: Throw out your kid's idiotic video game, shut off the TV and get Johnny and Suzy to work, because there is a storm coming their way ... Get ready for the Global Innovation Wars and process-based competition."

Consulting firm CTG and Ward Keever will target children's hospitals, trying to make it sound like more than it is (offering hospitals self-proclaimed experts at several multiples of their hourly salary): "It is supported by a suite of proprietary methodologies called Exemplar for Pediatric Clinical Transformation®. The methodologies, part of a larger set developed to support clinical improvement projects, features a unique, modular design that supports all work flows and every phase of large IT-enabled projects." That's a buzzword-rich load of BS. There's an old joke that there are no Texans, just Mexicans on the way to Oklahoma. Likewise, consultants are often displaced professionals looking for a full-time job and willing to sell their bodies and travel for a few months (or years) to find it. What goes on on the road, stays on the road. All the methodology nonsense aside, you're paying a premium for renting an individual instead of buying them, often because they don't like your organization or the burg you call home. They say "methodology" a lot.

News, rumors, or anything I would find interesting: e-mail me.