HIStalk Quotes
News 05/11/06
From The PACS Designer: "Philips Medical launches their Motiva home monitoring system that can be used with your existing TV setup provided that you are cable/satellite customer. This new technology could reduce the number of patients admitted to the hospital and also reduce the number of patient deaths in those institutions." I reported on April 26, 2005 that Philips had won an innovation award for Motiva in its European rollout. It could be a great business for them.
From Electric Slide: "All of a sudden we're very concerned about corroborating evidence. When did we pass into the realm of journalistic integrity? Careful or you'll take all the fun out of it. You choose to unabashedly print rumors from stock boards and other sources without concern, yet feel the need to check yourself before printing this particular story. It might be best to openly define the Epic rules for publication vs. the rules for everyone else. Epic's struggling at Allina and Allina's not alone. It doesn't make them a bad company, just one who's dealing with the complexities of the inpatient setting while managing a growing client base." Here's why I wanted backup on that story: (a) anonymous posters made the same Allina-Epic claim months ago and were dead wrong. (b) this is a no shades-of-gray statement -- either the project has stopped or it hasn't -- so if it's wrong, it's way wrong. (c) I chafe a bit at what sounds like a statement claiming I'll run anything I hear. You might be surprised at the stuff that doesn't see the HIStalk light of day because it doesn't pass the sniff test. This one wasn't obviously wrong, just something I'd like to see confirmed since that should be easy to do. (d) I really don't understand the insinuation that I'd favor Epic. It's one of few companies whose products I haven't really seen or used, whose executives I don't know, and whom I rarely mention in HIStalk. (e) I think it's obvious that the stock market postings are often wildly inflammatory, which is what makes them fun. If they take root, they become firmer rumors or news and are identified here as such.
From The Shelton Shadow: "HIStalk gets a 'Gold Star' for stopping the presses on the Allina rumor/rumour! If the rumour were true then why would Allina issue a Epic change notice on their website on May 3rd to the contrary of what the rumor informant posted? At least your honest readers have done their due diligence!" And from Anonymous: "Regarding Allina's reported plug-pull of Epic: that's a load of ... excrement."
From Benny Hinn: "Will UCSF stick with the GE/IDX/LastWord system forced on them during their six-month merger with Stanford, after which Stanford brought in Epic? I'm hearing rumblings."
From Anonymous: "I saw this Fortune magazine article on the VistA system with accolades to Dr. Kenneth Kizer, CEO of Medsphere. It says 'Kizer is in for a hard slog. He concedes that many hospital executives are reluctant to put their patients' lives in the hands of 'a nascent startup with a disruptive technology.' And big companies such as General Electric (Research), McKesson (Research), and Cerner (Research) all offer their own computerized clinical systems with electronic health records. So far Medsphere has about six customers, including Midland Memorial Hospital in Texas, that are offering OpenVista at 60 facilities.'" The article is here.
From Blazer: "I talked to someone at Intermountain Healthcare who says they're expecting a customized solution, not a off-the-rack product that GE can sell elsewhere. Phamis tried to work with them and failed. GE's product needs a lot of work and IHC can't offer much help. It doesn't sound like a perfect match, according to my contact."
Listening to now: Pernice Brothers, sunny, summertime pop.
From Sticky: "Re: GE Customer Pendleton Hospital Loses >5000 digital X-rays. Is there any evidence this loss is GE's fault? Was the appropriate
backup strategy too expensive? Have they installed cheap no-name hardware?" Here's the link. I noticed the press was quick to name GE as being at fault, but I wondered if they really were responsible for storage maintenance.
From CSharp: "I heard El Camino's Eclipsys implementation hasn't gone well, so maybe Mark Z's departure was well timed. Lots of PR from both Mark and Eclipsys, but the locals say patient safety has suffered with the jury-rigged pharmacy interface, along with an aggressive timeline that scrimped on testing. One might speculate that Eclipsys had a friendly mole that met their market needs rather than the hospital's."
From Anonymous: "GE is dumping Allscripts stock, reducing its stake from 17% to 5%."
From Headhunter: "I heard by the grapevine that president Jay Flynn recently left Emergisoft. He was a former McKesson Automated pioneer. Also, as far as Misys, I'm seeing a number of 5-7 year sales vets on the EMR side who are looking. For the first time, Misys is not making the cut against smaller companies like Greenway, Pulse, etc. that don't have any type of real reference sites or installation base. The Misys reps I'm talking to say their poor IT architecture has finally caught up to them."
Inside Healthcare Computing's latest issue has a killer story on some class action-type lawsuits filed against Cerner for not paying overtime to former employees. Recall the recent wins by technical employees at electronic game-maker EA, who paid out $15 million to two different employee groups in the past few months. I didn't see this story anywhere else, so methinks our Platinum Sponsor may have a scoop. Wouldn't it be interesting to see an Alan Shore-type attorney asking Neal Patterson exactly what he meant in his infamous e-mail shot heard 'round the world: "NEVER in my career have I allowed a team which worked for me to think they had a 40 hour job ... My measurement will be the parking lot: it should be substantially full at 7:30 AM and 6:30 PM. The pizza man should show up at 7:30 PM to feed the starving teams working late. The lot should be half full on Saturday mornings." No further questions, Your Honor, other than did Mr. Patterson happen to bring his checkbook?
Bad news and good for QuadraMed in their Q1 results. Bad: higher losses from operations, slightly lower revenue. Good: they nailed the first full-line Affinity sale after a long dry spell, although not a big one: $3.5 million over five years, including their first sale of the former Detente Systems LIS and the second of radiology. My take: the Affinity sale more than offsets the minorly worse financials, especially since it gets the old Detente stuff moving after gathering QD dust, perhaps undeservedly. Their main task is reassure prospects that the financial rollercoaster is over.
Health search engine Healthline (which ran the usual dot-bomb life cycle by dying a fiery death in 2001 after just two years of existence but was recently revived, apparently due to Google envy) brings on new members of its Medical Advisory Board: Ken Kizer of Medsphere, John Halamka of CareGroup, and Colleen Conway-Welch of Vanderbilt's nursing school.
BearingPoint turns over 24% of its consultants each year. Nice.
Eclipsys releases Sunrise Enterprise Scheduling.
No surprise: a study finds that 40% of medical malpractice suits are pure BS. The good news is that few of them result in payouts.
A nice UK shot at Accenture: "Take the case of David Miliband, the new man at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Its job is to hand out subsidies to farmers, but thousands have not yet received the money and are threatening to sue. The failure came because highly rewarded management consultants advised Defra to buy a spanking new IT system to process claims. The consultants were from Accenture, a child of Arthur Andersen, whose snake-oil salesmen went down in the Enron scandal. Margaret Thatcher's government blacklisted Andersen after shady behaviour by its consultants in the early 1980s. New Labour hasn't followed her example by banning Accenture from receiving more public money, even though the cost of the Defra computer system more than doubled from £18.1m to £37.4m and it doesn't work."
The US lags at least a dozen years behind other industrialized nations in using electronic medical records. We also are next-to-last among industrialized nations in infant mortality (thank God for Latvia) despite massive healthcare spending. "The researchers also said lack of national health insurance and short maternity leaves likely contribute to the poor U.S. rankings. Those factors can lead to poor health care before and during pregnancy, increasing risks for premature births and low birth weight, which are the leading causes of newborn death in industrialized countries. Infections are the main culprit in developing nations, the report said. Other possible factors in the U.S. include teen pregnancies and obesity rates, which both disproportionately affect African-American women and also increase risk for premature births and low birth weights." One might quibble at the use of the word "affect" for pregnancy and obesity, which are the consequence of personal decisions and not Lady Luck. Still, it sure seems like we're not getting our healthcare money's worth.
Emerson acquires mobile cart maker Flo Healthcare.
Other than being hot, that MedQuist phony degree chick has little to be happy about. The company releases "certain preliminary, partial and unaudited" financial results that can't be good for one's executive career. The sorry roster of misery is here.
Problems at Allina-Abbott NW are real. Bad code, cost overruns, can't get
it to scale. They have halted the project. Info comes from credible
sources within. I don't have permission to identify, so I won't.
I appreciate your attempt at verifying details related to any comment that
launches an assault and has no details. As I said before I read HIStalk
because of the industry insight. I don't need another soap opera or
reality-type web blog. My life is survivor-like enough, I don't need hype
I want as close to facts as possible - or inside scoops at least that are
near truth instead of statements by unhappy providers or competition.
Thanks, Mr. HIStalk! Again, you make me look very, very smart :)
Dear Mr. HISTalk: Here is another opinion on the journalistic integrity
subject. I applaud your constraint and keeping comments from "seeing the
light of day." Some anonymous comments have slipped through and left me
thinking, "What was the person's intent with this message?" If it was to
create negative publicity...this is bad behavior in my opinion. However, I
am sure it's difficult for you to judge a person's intent. Just food for
thought, how about letting more good news or good opinion hit the blog each
week. You might need to put it out there yourself if we cannot provide it
to you. Maybe we all could use a dose of Asset Based Thinking. Keep up the
good work in progress. Regards.
Hi, I enjoy reading your Blog and will likely at some time become a
registered user/responder as I have found it both interesting and
insightful over the years - I think you do some good things and I like what
people have to say. As to comments from CSharp - I left because I had 3
really great opportunities not because there were problems or concerns at
El Camino and they wanted me to stay as evidenced that I continue to
provide advise and guidance while they redefine the leadership overall and
in IT. The new system is up and running and as one might expect there are
some issues that are being addressed. As with any change like this,
introduced after over 35 years of one way of doing something, there are
some who are having more frustrtion than others and at El Camino this is no
different. All concerns are being addressed and to date no patient safety
issues have been encountered. To claim that I was a "friendly mole" or
that 2+ years is an agressive timeline pretty much fails to undersand what
is and has happened over the 5 years I have been involved with El Camino.
I would be happy to discuss with you and create a post that would be
accurate if you like.
Amen Mark! Honestly, I have spoken with Mark on a few occaisons and found
him to be one of the most honest and forthcoming in the business. Best
wishes as you pursue your new opportunities and please give Mark the chance
to share his experiences with the rest of us!
Onto another topic, can Intermountain come clean on their expectations of
GE-IDX and their strategy? Blazer's comments along with the puzzling
changes (3M to 3M and Stockell to SAGE to developing your own content while
developing a strategy to IDX to GE to GE-IDX) has those of us who are
trying to learn from others' challenges a bit befuddled.
To Electric Slide: I got an idea about Epic rules of publication. Let's
try it on. Let's call it "Let Epic have their celebration." Why? Any HIT
vendor that has reached a recognized commercial success should be allowed
to party as long as the good times roll. Based upon the whining I hear
from their competitors, Epic is indeed enjoying commercial success. Like
their predecessors, Epic should enjoy a big "in your face" high-5
slap-happy party where plenty of small and medium size animals are roasted
over open fire in their own juices. I would suggest that denying Epic this
right is cruel. Cerner, Meditech..etc all had their day in the spotlight.
As time passes, even Epic will find itself sitting on a blog crafting
snippy mean spirited sour grapes commentary and rumor at its successor.
The Self-Admiration Circle of Life in the HIT vendor space needs to be
respected by all stakeholders. Whew! Now that we have that settled, who
wants to tell their favorite story or anecdote about our new king of HIT?
Come on..don't be shy! I know you have one.
