News 01/16/04

Nebraska's Fremont Medical Center picks Cerner clinicals. Children's Hospital Boston does too, in a deal that includes Children's getting something for clinical rules it develops. Obviously these announcements, like those from other vendors, were shelved until closer to earnings release dates.

A couple of hospitals in the Netherlands sign up with Agfa for PACS, RIS, and CR.

Hospitals who want to be considered for Most Wired 2004 can get the survey here.

Akron General Medical Center sells its tech subsidiary and turns over physician claims services to NextMED.

Chicago's Sacred Heart Hospital sues small-hospital HIS vendor American HealthNet for $2 million for what it says was a flawed billing and record-keeping information system that could not be installed. I would have been concerned that this ASP's website was created with FrontPage and Adobe GoLive and also has the company's name spelled wrong on the window title. Never heard of 'em.

Just in case you're looking for an analytical, first-person account of healthcare and economic conditions in Iraq, here's the opinion of renowned global expert and Hollywood liberal Jeff Spicoli, er, Mr. Madonna Sean Penn. From Fast Times at Ridgemont High: "This is U.S. History, I see the globe right there."

Rumor: sales guys were canned at Eclipsys last week.

Nova Southeastern University will repay $4.2 million to the state of Florida for billing discrepancies in a mental health program it runs for the poor. The school's computer is at fault, in one case billing 720 minutes for a one-hour session. The school knew about the problem for two years and didn't fix it. They paid the same $4.2 million in 1999 for Medicaid fraud. What programs does NSU offer? Medicine, computer science, and accounting, among others. Ha.