News 02/10/04

Professor Steve
Thanks to Steve Priest, aka Professor Steve, who read my "Ex-CIOs Can Do Almost Anything" article about his Web site and sent me a nice note. He says "I have added www.histalk.com to my Favorites. Interesting comments. Keep up the good work." My best wishes to Steve as well. We should all be so lucky to piece together a living doing stuff we like to do. And, if you have any publisher connections, Steve is looking for someone to print his outdoor enthusiast stories.

Quadramed Settles Shareholder Suit
Quadramed announces that it has settled securities litigation against the company and some of its officers. Insurance covered the cost, but also mentioned is "derivative litigation" by the same plaintiff that is not yet resolved.

Idaho Hospital's Salaries Are Published
I've written before about how basically anyone can get anonymous access to nonprofit hospital salaries. All it takes is a slow news day and an inquisitive reporter. They must have these in Twin Falls, ID because Magic Valley Regional Medical Center's salaries made the paper this week. Their paramedic supervisor had a $39,000 salary but added $47,000 more in overtime, differential, and on-call, joining three other paramedics who earned more than double their base salaries. CIO R'Nee Mullen made the list, too, adding $10,000 to her base pay of $106,000. I've never been to Idaho, but this picture on the hospital's site certainly isn't what I envisioned it looked like. Magic Valley indeed.

Park City Announces Buzzword Fest
Park City Solutions partners with Microsoft on a healthcare portal. That one short summary took many paragraphs of buzzwords in the press release announcing it, among them: portal, robust, workflow, disparate, go-to-market, solution, legacy, leveraging, seamless, strategic, and synergy. If you're scoring at home, give them a marketer's home run. Just don't try to make sense of what they wrote.

Mrs. Neal Patterson May Run for Congress
Jeanne Lillig-Patterson, wife of Cerner CEO Neal Patterson, is considering a run for Congress. She's never held public office, but a top Missouri Republican consultant pronounced her “exactly the kind of candidate who we think could give us a legitimate chance of capturing that district.” Hey, if Gopher from "The Love Boat" and the less-talented half of "Sonny and Cher" can become Congressmen, I wouldn't rule it out.

America's First Hospital Turns 252
The Pennsylvania Hospital opened to serve the poor, sick, and insane on February 11, 1752. Add your own punchline to turn this fact into a quip.

Did Dr. Atkins Die Fat?
The widow of Dr. Robert Atkins is upset at the unauthorized release of a medical examiner's report into her husband's death last year. The report said Atkins was overweight at 258 pounds, had a history of heart attacks, and suffered from high blood pressure. Not much of an endorsement for the Atkins Diet, which he followed himself. Who released the information on the doctor who single-handedly is killing the pastry, potato, and sugar industries? None other than the pro-vegetarian Physicians Commitee for Responsible Medicine, who might want to check the dictionary for both the definition of "responsible" and the spelling of the possessive "physicians'." And, in a similar breach of celebrity medical records privacy, reporters say Nicole Kidman has breast cancer after getting medical records from her Los Angeles hospital visit last month. She denies it.

SeeBeyond to Integrate UK Systems
IDX will use SeeBeyond's eGate product to interconnect its electronic medical records applications with other systems in the United Kingdom.
 
TempusXpress Released
Tempus Software announces the release of TempusXpress Access Manager, an integrated scheduling and access management solution for smaller hospitals. Included are rules-based scheduling, pre-registration, medical necessity checking, and automated callback reminders. 

Good Numbers for Misys Healthcare
Misys announced good semi-annual results today. Revenue was up 11%, profits up 5%. Misys CPR, the renamed Per-Se' Patient1 product it acquired last year, increased revenue but reduced profit by 3%.

Hospital Blames Loss on IT
Washington's Evergreen Healthcare lost millions of dollars in 2003. The CEO blames the installation of new clinical and financial systems that pushed AR days from the high 50s to high 70s. The system was not named, but Cerner's site has its version of the story: "Recognizing that its own business office procedures needed to be automated and streamlined, Evergreen selected Cerner and the unified Cerner Millennium information system, which offers numerous discipline-specific applications all built on a common architecture. One of the many solutions it implemented was ProFit, which provided Evergreen with patient accounting tools that streamlined the revenue cycle and increased operational efficiencies. Following months of preparation, the implementation in December 2002 was a phenomenal success."

Oracle Intensifies PeopleSoft Hunt
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison will urge PeopleSoft shareholders to elect Oracle's slate of candidates for PeopleSoft's Board of Directors, stating that "the current directors of PeopleSoft are not acting, and will not act, in your best interests." PeopleSoft rejected Oracle's sweetened offer of a $9.4 billion takeover yesterday. The Department of Justice is expected to issue its recommendation this week, with many predicting it will recommend not allowing the merger to take place.