HIStalk Quotes
News 05/09/06
posted 05/09/2006
From MisysCrisis: "Gotta love that disinformation piece from the 'client' about how great Emergisoft's product is. This is the worst ED product by far. You reported how it was de-installed in AZ recently. Where are the installs and customer wins? Truth is this dog's been on the block for several years. They never make even the final 3 in new selections. Sounds to me like some Emergisoft exec was pumping this dog up and it also sounds like Misys is bottom fishing again." I wondered about that, too, considering Emergisoft's not-so-great KLAS ranking (although with insufficient sample size to be reliable, I should note.) I take all anonymous rah-rah reports with a grain of salt, like the lengthy one this week claiming to be from a nearly orgasmically happy Agfa customer that I just happened to track back to an Agfa IP address. Moral of the story: I'll keep you anonymous no matter what, so if you have something that I might struggle to believe and you work for a provider, use your work e-mail account without fear.
Also, a couple of Emergisoft prospects asked how any Misys acquisition might affect them. I've not been a Misys customer for awhile, so if you have, please provide advice for them. Would an acqusition be good news or bad for Emergisoft customers? Also, to clarify my earlier comments, two people have confirmed that discussions are taking place, but not that it's a done deal.
From IDX-Tarrant Watcher: "IDX Co-Founder Rich Tarrant chose as his campaign song, 'Taking Care of Business.' Tarrant was never very good about checking details, and didn't notice that this song actually mocks people who have to work every day. The song ends with these words: 'Take good care of my business, when I'm away, every day whoo!' Hmm. Now that Tarrant is away, the UK is auditing IDX's NHS performance. Perhaps the truth will come out soon. GE got stuck with a huge problem, while Tarrant took a lot of money and ran." I could kick myself because I had the same thought to check the lyrics when I read that story originally, but got distracted. I was thinking of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," which some of my fellow right-wing flag-wavers play as though it's a rousing Sousa march, when in fact it's a Viet Nam protest: "I had a buddy at Khe Sahn, fighting off the Viet Cong, they're still there, he's all gone, he had a little girl in Saigon, I got a picture of him in her arms." And have I mentioned that I saw Bachman-Turner Overdrive play TCOB and the remainder of their paltry catalog back when Four Wheel Drive was burning up the charts? They really were a journeyman bar band who got lucky and it sounded that way.
From Anonymous: "I talked to friend working at Allina this past week and they told me they're actually having to stop the Epic implementation ..." I'll stop there until someone can confirm this because I think it would be irresponsible to just throw it out there without some corroboration. I'll run the whole thing if someone who isn't anonymous will verify that first sentence (and I'll still keep you anonymous once I verify your credibility.) I appreciate the rumors and, even though blogs don't usually have any sort of accountability or standards, I want to be accurate, so please don't be insulted if I ask for confirmation. Lots of people read here and I don't want to waste their time.
From Smitty: "Most powerful docs, #24. Modern Healthcare last week published readers' picks for the 50 most powerful physicians in the United States, and Boston was well represented. No. 2: Dr. Donald Berwick, executive director of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement; No. 9: Dr. James Mongan, chief executive of Partners HealthCare System; No. 17: Dr. Gary Gottlieb, president of Brigham and Women's Hospital; No. 24: Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; No. 36: Dr. David Blumenthal, health policy professor at Harvard Medical School; and No. 44: Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor of The New England Journal of Medicine." Congrats to John Halamka. I didn't realize he had that much non-IT visibility.
From Anonymous: "The Cerner article in Fast Company is now online." Read it here (warning: PDF.)
From UK Watcher: "Rumour from iSoft people is that 200 or more people have been laid off."
MEDecision names Ronald D. Nall as EVP/CIO.
First Consulting Group releases Q1 results. Revenue down slightly, EPS $0.18 vs. -$0.05.
Only a few years after wi-fi became mandatory in coffee shops, bars, and even cheap hotels, it's still newsworthy when a hospital rolls it out to patients. Not much more common is offering hard-wired Internet access in patient rooms. How can we spend all this money on technology and still have antique telephones, cold war era TVs, and computerless rooms for patients? Maybe treating patients like prisoners incents them to leave, thereby reducing length of stay.
Diagnosis software Isabel keeps getting press, this time on Boston TV. Whoever's handling their PR must be a whiz to keep them in the limelight, which is unusual for a small software vendor even if their product is outstanding.
Houston's 911 service goes down due to an AT&T upgrade, which also blocked all calls to and from Methodist Hospital.
CyberAngel "phone home" tracking technology routes police to a stolen hospital laptop, although six months had passed since the theft.
Symantec gives Ohio's Kettering Medical Center Network a Visionary Award for its threat management solution implementation.
A study from Johns Hopkins Childrens Center finds that web-based calculators that support pediatric and chemotherapy ordering reduce medication errors significantly. That's not necessarily good news, given that most vendor CPOE systems don't have sophisticated capability of that sort. I've only worked with two big-name, allegedly state-of-the-art clinical systems but neither could duplicate the capability of a $2 calculator in allowing users to define customized on-screen logic and flow.
Former FCG CFO Mike Puntoriero assumes that same role for AVANIR Pharmaceuticals.
Congratulations to the team of computer science grad students from Virginia Commonwealth University whose Team PocketDoc software for hand-held devices won a Microsoft software design contest. The patient-doctor communication system was designed with Richmond Children's Hospital.
CPC Reference Laboratories will implement LIS and outreach systems from Fletcher-Flora.
News, rumors, ideas: e-mail me.
comments (2)
1. Rational left...
05/09/2006 8:41 pm
The problem with free comments is that vendors and vendor competitors begin
pumping and knocking each other here as we apparently have seen by "client"
and "MisysCrisis" banter. But the value of this site has proven itself that
rumors have seen some truth. But rationalize folks, just because a company
is seen at another vendor means NOTHING. More partnerships exist than
acquisitions. As for EDIS, try to name any company that is truly superb and
you will be hard pressed. KLAS is a joke Mr. HISTalk. They would sell their
mother for a buck. Misys seems to be the partnership and acquisition leader
at the moment. Next week it will be Eclipsys. Must love these rumor cycles.
I would not count on any of this unless you see it on one of the company's
websites.
2. Anony-mouse left...
05/10/2006 6:26 am
How can the central nurses' stations still run Windows 98 or NT on
8-year-old PCs but people still want to give patients PCs? Let's take care
of the caregivers first, then worry about the patient. It is not a "hotel"
as the hospitals are called in Canada.
