HIStalk Quotes
News 02/21/07
From June Cleaver: "Re: KLAS. MH wrote about how KLAS runs and its bias towards EPIC. As a customer who has Cerner and McKesson products, the quote used is exactly what KLAS used on me - 'are you sure you want to rate them that high.' Now I am a little curious about the whole process. Maybe Kent Gale can explain how they conduct these interviews. It seems rather odd that you complete a survey and then they call you and ask you to reconsider your score. That clearly creates a level of bias." I've done surveys for them (not lately) and saw no evidence of bias, but as someone pointed out, it may depend on who's conducting the interview or what products you're reviewing for them. If you've experienced what you perceived to be KLAS bias first-hand, e-mail me a description of what happened. I'll compile the reports, remove any identifying information, and send them over to KLAS for their response. That's fair, yes?
From The PACS Designer: "Re: teamwork. TPD has worked with many customers over the years on a department-by-department basis. As we get more of an enterprise-connected environment, it will become more important for institutions to form teams comprised of many departments in order for each member of the team to learn how others work each day and how to provide solutions that can work for everyone. While there are many excellent IT departments, they still need to learn from other departments how they operate each day. Perhaps we can get some discussion going amongst HIStalk readers on their feelings of the pluses and minuses of becoming team players to enhance the enterprise-connected world of healthcare."
From Joe Scarlet: "Re: CHW CIO. Her name was Gayle Simkin and she was sort of low level for a CIO. It is a Perot outsource and it has gone bad big time. Installs are late and bad and CHW has brought in Accenture (interim CIO) and hired new employees and canned Perot managers. Rumor is Perot will out within six months for failure to meet contractural obligations."
From Duuude: "Re: smartest move winner, Meditech, for doing nothing. I'm sorry, while it's probably a smart business move to watch the HIS vendors step on each other, flounder, make bad design decisions, etc. but what does it say about our industry that the best thing is for a vendor to do nothing? Wasn't there a recent discourse about how immature the EMR products are? How these vendors are not truly there and still need to innovate? And we celebrate a vendor sitting on their arse? Sorry that's not impressive. I expect a lot more from this industry."
From LiveJournal guy: "Re: LiveJournal feed. HIStalk now available as LiveJournal syndicated site. Not sure how many of you are LiveJournal bloggers, but pretty sure at least a lot of [ex] Epic employees are. Click here to add HIStalk to your friends page." Link. I confess that I'm so out of touch that I don't know exactly what that means, but thanks for the plug. I'll have to go looking for blogs by former Epic employees.
From PassTheMustard: "Rumor has it that key member(s) of Bond Technologies were in Raleigh, NC last week to meet with local HIT companies." Lots of folks probably haven't heard of that EMR vendor. I have, although I was surprised to find in searching HIStalk that I've never mentioned them.
From Not too late: "Re: Misys. I can't believe that all those MISYSnites kept this secret so long. Anyway, for those that haven't already heard, Vern Davenport, formerly of the Kodak Health Group, is the new Executive VP and General Manager of Misys Healthcare Systems. If anyone can fix it, Vern can......" Link. He worked for Siemens, too. Tom's Skelton's CEO title is history. "Misys previously was more of a portfolio of businesses than a single company, but that is changing under Lawrie, Davenport said. 'There is one CEO and [Lawrie] is it,' he said. 'I run the health-care business. There is no ambiguity there.'"
From Nasty Parts: "Re: new Misys CEO. Wow. What a yawn reaction to the announcement. I can see why he's so qualified to lead the Misys resurrection. I mean, Kodak has just lit the healthcare world on fire the last few years and you can't argue with the momentum that Siemens has in the market. And, if that's not enough, he started his career out at IBM, another healthcare power player. If I were a Misys employee I'd be running for the competition before all the good seats on the bus are taken."
From Carris: "Re: USB PHRs. Interesting article in today's Annals of Internal Medicine about a security threat posed by USB PHRs. Would certainly make me think twice about accepting these devices in my practice or hospital." Link. I don't have a subscription, so maybe someone can summarize.
Don't forget - Beers with Bush bidding for charity ends Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. Eastern. Response has been gratifying, to say the least.
Just in case I forget to mention it again this weekend. HIStalk buttons can be found at the booths of Medicity and Picis, for which I'm grateful to both.
New poll to your right: if you aren't going to HIMSS, will you work more, less, or the same next week?
You may have noticed some general goofiness with the site lately. An image server is being upgraded and, if that isn't enough, the blog service will be making changes shortly that will probably change the appearance of HIStalk, at least for awhile. Hang in there with me, please. Headaches I don't have time for, definitely, but I'm trying to stay on top of them.
I don't believe I mentioned that R. Gaines Baty Associates has become a HIStalk Gold Sponsor, for which I thank them very much. They do executive searches and have filled some cool jobs.
Outpatient clinic EMR vendor Nightingale acquires VantageMed, which sells EMR and PM software.
I'm hearing a very faint rumor of some Kaiser HealthConnect leadership changes. Too soft to mention specifically, but if you know anything, I'm listening.
Medicity will provide its MediTrust interoperability platform and ProAccess clinical suite to Bay Area Community Informatics Agency, an Oregon RHIO with eight healthcare organizations participating. "Many of our members are acquiring EMRs and other clinical information systems. We intend to utilize Medicity’s MediTrust clinical interoperability platform and ProAccess clinical applications to allow each organization in BACIA to contribute and share clinical information across the full continuum of care in our service area.”
Interest comments on blade servers from a Cerner data center manager and others. Their high density hits existing data center cooling and power specs hard. Interesting concept: a software tool to measure how much CPU and power an application consumes, apparently a lot higher now than just a few years ago.
Intermountain Healthcare chooses McKesson's Horizon Homecare.
An interesting article in Government Health IT on whether EMRs really reduce medical errors.
Here's one of those "it's a slow news day, so let's print the salaries of everyone who works at the local hospital" articles. Actually, it's University of Missouri. The bucks seem quite restrained, but then again I'm still punchy from Catholic Healthcare West's largesse.
A new healthcare tablet PC from Intel and Motion Computing was supposed to be unveiled today. HIStalk readers were underwhelmed at the prototype, as I recall. More info here, including videos. Looks like an Etch-a-Sketch with a big handle and a barcode reader built in (optional.) It also has a built-in camera, although I don't know of many EMR applications that can easily accept pictures. Seems kind of cool, at least in the videos.
A new GAO report says the Bush administration's feel-good privacy statements hide its lack of a real strategy for safeguarding EMR privacy. NHIN doesn't have adequate safeguards either, they say.
George Soros owned Visicu stock, but he recently sold it. It's still 67% off its 52-week high and a competitor's patent challenge is being re-reviewed.
Another FCG board member bites the dust, the second in a few days.
The COO of Allscripts says he's out of there once a replacement is found.
News, rumors, your pledge to seek out and wear your HIStalk button at HIMSS like a brash pirate flying the Jolly Roger in civil waters: e-mail me.
Happy for Vern. I knew Vern from his SMS days and always thought he was
smart, nice, and definitely successful. Some said he was at times a real
pain in the ass boss, but I never saw it. I'm not sure he can turn around
Misys, but he's a plus for them.
To Duuude... I think what MEDITECH got recognition for was for "staying
the course". Not sure how you interpret that as doing nothing? Sticking
to a strategy seems to make sense in an industry that typically promises a
whole lot more than it delivers. ("Those of you attending HIMSS don't pass
out on all that vaporware") There is also something to be said about
delivering what you say your going to deliver and then continuing to stay
the course to try and get there. As a long term MEDITECH customer I'm glad
they continue to provide consistency and stay the course on their strategy.
You can say anything you want about MEDITECH but having both MEDITECH and
Epic I've got to tell you that Epic maintenance on just one product costs
us 1/3 of our total annual maintenance expenses on about 1/4th of our total
number of devices. Takes about 20 citrix servers to make 200 concurrent
Epic sessions work. Compared to MEDITECH Epic is a hard application to
support, has NO legimate archive solution, and actually once you get behind
the front end of it all its just MUMPS anyway. Wonder if Howard taught
Judy everythign she knows? My guess is that there is a history there,
because it sure does look and function the same as an old version of Magic
under the covers. The thing I will give Epic however is that users like
their product, after a whole lot of effort it works as promised (as does
MEDITECH). What can you say Epic sure is pretty. I guess pretty is better
then doing nothing.
RE: KLAS questions: As someone who has taught research methods for 20
years and has a Ph.D. in the subject, I can say that if KLAS interviewers
asked the questions that several have reported--"are you sure you want to
rate them that high"--than we must ignore any and all KLAS reports. Such
behavior by KLAS is way beyond bias. It's out and out fraud.
RE: Babbage: It's only bias if they only do it for particular vendors.
But if they call EVERYONE and ask these questions (and no one has said yet
that they don't), then it's appropriate and may in fact create a better
survey. Besides, what does "beyond bias" mean anyway??
Glad to see R. Gaines Baty as a new advertiser. I have worked with Gaines
and his staff from a candidate perspective. They are very professional,
very thorough and very successful at placing high quality candidates into
high quality companies. If I ever have to higher staff (hopefully never as
I love just being a sales guy) they will be at the top of my call list.
Well I began discounting KLAS reports as soon as I saw Siemens Soarian
being rated so highly for CPOE. The fact that it is rated at all for CPOE
when you struggle to find a referencable practicing physician anywhere in
the continental US using Soarian code in unbelievable. So much for a
minimum threshhold of customers to qualify for rating. Now, I can believe
that there are Invision sites who are succesfully using Invision to enter
orders. If those are being counted as Soarian it just further discredits
the KLAS methodology in my mind as having a lack of rigour to be a
consistent reliable source.
CHW: Mrs Simkin retired, Perot brought in additional management (none were
terminated that I am aware of), and it is my understanding Perot has been
asked to expand their business with CHW. Accenture is fulfilling interim
CIO role to allow corporate leadership to conduct a national search.
Maybe you can get KLAS to comment on this:
Hey Meditech Dude.................. Would love to hear more about what it
takes to support EPIC. We are looking at supporting our users with Citrix
and would like to know any shortfalls that you have found?
THanks,
TS
your UMC salary list is not complete. Senior Management of the Health
System/Hospital are not listed.
Who is the new CIO at CHW? I had heard that Perot had some problems with
CHW but had turned everything around -- true?
Vern Davenport? He was the model for the Pointy-Haired Boss in the Dilbert
Cartoon.
Kept bouncing from job to job at Kodak since arrival. Misys is in
bigger trouble than they ever imagined. Complete empty suit
The Annals of Internal Medicine Article in a nutshell: they took the common
USB key based PHRs, including CapMed and MedicAlert, and modified the
software on the USB key to launch a (silent) program that would, after the
thumb drive was inserted into a computer, scan the computer for interesting
files and copy them back to the drive, which is presumably handed back to
the patient. This highlights a huge issue: allowing patients to bring
software into the doctor's office and run it on the doctor's computers is a
major security risk.
Regarding the 4 questions for KLAS that anonymous posted..as a vendor, I
have received #4 calls several times. Also suspect #3 is true although it
is not always clear who did the actual research on a particular product
survey.
