News 02/23/07

I'm short on time, but thought I'd file this last report before my live HIMSS updates that will start Sunday or so. And I just got off the phone with Don Trigg, Cerner's chief marketing officer, so I'll have a little preview of their HIMSS activities and how they view the conference, probably Sunday unless I decide to write Saturday.

From Anonymous: "Re: KLAS. I have been surveyed by KLAS several times. Maybe it is the product/vendor, but I saw no evidence of bias."

From NoKlas: "Re: KLAS. Over 50% of their income is from vendors. Where is the transparency on their finances and their statistical methodology?" 

From Klas Warfare: "Re: KLAS. I think for them to gain credibility, they should hire a neutral 3rd party to conduct an audit of their processes and validate the precision of their survey instrument. Then, release the findings publicly." Well, that would certainly allay the concerns. I think KLAS puts out pretty good information and that stamp of approval might influence the swing voters. I've still received no specifics on any first-hand observed bias from anyone (although a couple of readers volunteered that they'd been interviewed and saw no bias at all.)

From EyeFartMisys: "Re: Mike Lawrie. In a meeting with Misys employees on Monday, Mike Lawrie dropped a bomb on hospital systems. He mentioned a 'De-focus' on hospital systems and entertaining offers to sell Lab and CPR. The next 'major' announcement is supposed to come on March 8th." Did he really say that? The March 8 date looms large, so maybe he did give a tip-off, although I'd feel better if someone confirmed hearing that specifically.

From Insideout: "Re: Misys. It's common practice, I'm sure. Misys is taking increasing heat for giving aliases to its Indian employees who are training for PayerPath. Rashneesh becomes Brad Anderson and Rupee Sanjay becomes Alicia Smith. We clients are not fooled. Rumor has it that a reference list floats around so employees can remember who is ...or is not.. who."

From Sue Ellen Mischke: "Re: your latest post. Hilarious. I nearly peed." That would be Dr. Glaser's article, I believe. I agree.

From Steve-Dave: "Re: Medicity. Is it me-DIS-ity (like Centricity)? or Medi-city?" The former.

From Johnny Socko: "Re: HIStalk mobile. I can't read HIStalk worth a crap on my Treo. Any ideas?" If anyone knows, please help Mr. Socko. I have enough problems trying to read on a 19" monitor, so I know zilch about mobile reading.

Congratulations to Fred Trotter, whose $1351 donation to charity won him the chance to spend time with Jonathan Bush of athenahealth at HIMSS. Thanks to everyone who bid. Fred has helped Project Health and that organization is appreciative. Fred's an open source guy and is soliciting conversation ideas for JB. He invites HIStalk readers to make suggestions. I feel like Jim Lange of The Dating Game for hooking Fred and JB up, except I don't wear wide 70s ties, make smutty double entendres, and gyrate my thrust-up forefinger to illustrate my pathetic need to feel hip while so clearly being far from it. Fred will get additional recognition, so look for his name on a sign in the athenahealth booth. Thanks to Fred for helping a cause that can use it and to Jonathan Bush for playing along with an idiot blogger's "let's put on a show" idea that mostly involves his sacrifice, not mine. I need to remember to cover the cost of those beers since it's the least I can do. And, lest you think he was kidding, I've been reminded that JB really does intend to sneak beer into athena's HIMSS booth for you HIStalkers who drop by. Don't embarrass me by getting tanked right after lunch.

Sometimes I forget that it may not be obvious when I'm kidding about something or not. For the HISsies awards, those speeches that I included were actually sent to me by those winners (whom I solicited to do so.) Ditto John Glaser's piece - that wasn't me imitating him, it was really him. I've received several comments about how fun John's article was, so for those going to New Orleans, check out his session. His "trinkets" diatribe from last year was a big hit. He even sent me a Trinkets Magic Quadrant, a decisionmaking tool for deciding what to do with individual conference giveaways.

Now this is cool: Medicity has taken an open source content management application and will help its customers deploy portals with it, with Medicity providing the hosting and add-on tools. Content-driven portals have always really been expensive, so Medicity has figured out this interesting way to help add value for their customers. They've also got a lot of portal expertise themselves, of course, although this will be for the non-clinical side of the house (employees and patients, for example.) Those projects, while hardly mission-critical, can eat up a lot of energy and money (remember temporarily hot company Cytura before they sold out?) I think they'll be demonstrating at HIMSS, which gives you two excellent reasons to drop by (HIStalk buttons being the first, although being sponsor-neutral, I'll mention that you can get those at the Picis booth, too.)

Another fun charity idea: Beacon Partners will give out $1 Mardi Gras tokens to the first 1500 visitors to their booth (#3141.) Keep yours if you want, but if you drop it in the bucket, the company will match it and donate it to the Common Ground Health Clinic.

A reader from a well-known company is researching examples where a hospital CIO was forced out over failed or failing EMR or other clinical projects, such as budget overruns or delays. His company already knows the well-publicized examples, but if you know others, e-mail me with the facility, the CIO and the type of problem. No names will be used (either of contributors or of affected CIOs) since the result will be a study only of how often it happens. We've all heard the rumors, so I'm interested myself - are CIOs losing jobs because of underwhelming clinical systems results?

Cerner stock just keeps rising, hitting another new all-time high today, $53.32 at the close.

A $73 million settlement is proposed against Arthur Andersen for that company's role in the HBOC shareholder swindle. They are, of course, accounting legend, having also blessed the fictional financial books of Enron, Sunbeam, and WorldCom.

Everybody knows Bill Childs, right? Formerly of TDS, Healthcare Informatics, MC Informatics, Eclipsys, and MaxIT. Well, Bill has joined Lucida Healthcare IT Group as VP of business development. You read my interview with Bruce Cerullo, so you know what Lucida does. Stop by their HIMSS booth #5753 and say hi to Bill and Bruce. Nice guys.

Mike Sauk, CIO of University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, is profiled in the local technology journal.

David Whiles, IT director at Midland Memorial Hospital, will talk about their deployment of Medsphere's OpenVista at the HIMSS conference.

A venture capitalist whose biggest 2006 investment success was Visicu makes a list of big dealmakers. Guess he cashed in at the IPO since the stock has gone down greatly since then. Zero sum game, you know.

Sometimes HIStalk makes me feel like I have a little bottle with a genie in it that grants my wishes. I mentioned that I wasn't a journal subscriber and therefore couldn't read the cool-sounding article on USB threats in healthcare, so naturally several wonderful readers sent it over for my review. Oh, and one of them was a co-author of the article. I never know who's reading. Book report to follow.

I think the problem with HIStalk images has been resolved. It was a couple of geeky issues, but the crux is that HIStalk has been so successful that it overloaded the server that provides images, ads, and other goodies here and there. Anyway, all of that has been moved to a big-iron server ($$$) and the expert I hired to help has fine-tuned some stuff I don't even understand, so hopefully we're good to go. Thanks for the patience. I still have one more hurdle: some blog service changes coming up very shortly will probably screw up the layout until I can either fix it myself or find some web expert to help me.

Intranexus donates $10 million in licensing fees for their Sapphire product to hospitals affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They're also donating their HIMSS booth furniture to Katrina victims through a local project. Good idea.

I notice that Cerner's idea of staffing their HIMSS booth with customers is being "appropriated" by several other vendors.  

OK, that's it for now. The next time you hear from me will be from New Orleans. If you want to send me your impressions of HIMSS, anything interesting you saw there, etc. feel free to do so anytime next week. Lots of people read my daily recaps, so I can use some help. Travel safely and I'll see you down there.