HIStalk Quotes
News 05/16/07
posted 05/15/2007
From HereWeGoAgain: "Re: SageHealth. The exodus begins after lackluster key hires. Recent resignations are Larry Armold, SVP of Operations, and Jim Thompson, Regional VP of Sales. Two tenured, industry experienced leaders leave? Wonder what they know? I'd say Sage Health is heading down the same path Misys is on. Shame, too, because Intergy is a pretty decent product."
From Marion Wormer: "Re: ads. Thought you would appreciate this article." A new consumer research article says that "exposure advertising" like web banner ads creates a favorable attitude towards the sponsor or product, even when the reader isn't paying attention. Ads created familiarity and ultimately positive feelings, even when people don't recall the ad itself. I think that's true of HIStalk sponsor ads, at least based on my reader survey, in which 37.4% of respondents said they had a higher interest in or appreciation of companies that sponsor. I truly appreciate every HIStalk sponsor and the readers who make it possible -- I know how lucky I am to have the support of both.
From XLT is Groovy: "Re: Digital Healthcare Conference. Thought you'd like to see this. There are links to the presentations and the videos of the talks. Most presenters just had a shell presentation - the meat was in the discussion and interaction with the audience." Pretty cool, and the videos stream really well. Peter Strombom sounds curmudgeonly, saying that RHIOs are all about to fail and the term is about to fade into antiquity like CHINs (I've been saying that too, so I won't criticize, but he did sound awfully cranky in general).
From Tony D'Annunzio: "Re: eClinicalWorks lawsuit. eCW countersued, and after the facts were discussed, the customer initiated settlement in April 2007. That was the only suit."
From KCFan: "Re: John Wade. Actually, he is no longer CIO, as noted in his PowerPoint slides from the meeting referenced. Deb Gash is now the CIO at St. Luke's." Thanks. I thought he had retired, but it wasn't clear from the article.
From WallBanger: "Re: rumor. Any more information on the e-mail from the Indianapolis hospital? Can you post a portion of the e-mail? Come on, what is a Rumor Report if you don't report it!" OK, I'll post part of it, but I'm really looking for confirmation before blasting details: "Yesterday morning, in concert with *** leadership, *** and *** made the very difficult decision that *** will cease using the *** Clinical Documentation application for all but a very limited number of functions. We will continue to use *** for documentation of medication administration (eMAR). The same decision has been made by the leadership of ***. As you probably know, we had high hopes the code upgrade that we put into place on April 14th would resolve the production problems we have been experiencing since November. Not only did this not happen but things have deteriorated since the upgrade. There has been a lot of effort on the part of *** leaders to get answers to our production problems from *** and what it all boils down to is that there are problems in their software that need to be fixed. This type of fix can take many months. We had already made the decision to take the ICUs back to paper effective early June because of the huge drain that this takes on productivity and the amount of stress it was creating for the staff in those units. As we began planning how this would work with patients moving into and out of these units, it became clear that having part of the patient's medical record on-line and part on paper would make it even more difficult for clinicians to decipher the patient's clinical picture and create unintended consequences that could jeopardize the safe passage of our patients through the system." There, happy? If someone will confirm on the record (anonymously), I'll fill in the redacted parts and include the rest of the text.
A couple of readers pointed out the Kiowa County Memorial Hospital (Greensburg, KS) website, but it looks like a project that didn't get far. It still has developer notes and placeholders without content.
Thanks to Inga for the nifty haiku. She really is cool, isn't she?
I said when Linda Reino took the MedQuist job nine months ago that she was making a mistake, even with comp in the $500K range. "My first thought: she's lost her mind. My second: she's lost her job. My third: she's getting big bucks."
A reader sent a link to a lawsuit filed against Allscripts by Drexel University College of Medicine (actually their for-profit practice group) a few weeks ago, claiming that TouchWorks "does not function per the specifications provided." The ten counts include breach of contract, fraud, and a few other items. They paid $1,400,162 for the system and claim billing problems cost them nearly $3 million. Drexel filed an injunction requiring Allscripts to provide a system that does E&M coding correctly or pay professional coders to do the job. One example they claimed: there is no Review of Systems template for the E&M coder that handles allergy/immunologic or hematologic/lymphatic organ systems. They provided what they said was an e-mail confirmation from Allscripts that some functions didn't work properly. You're hearing just one side of the story, of course, so I wouldn't get too excited until Allscripts gets their turn to talk.
Rumor heard: what C-level vendor executive got the axe awhile back after being caught charging professional female companionship to his corporate Amex?
Another rumor heard: a large QuadraMed Affinity customer is unhappy about delayed clinical enhancements and architecture changes, to the point that they may go back to a best of breed strategy and start a search for EMR and financial systems.
Rumor confirmed: one Cerner customer's CMIO was also on Cerner's payroll. David Voran, MD was Health Midwest's CMIO and also a Client Physician Executive for Cerner. Proof here. I assume this was disclosed during his demos. If not, you know who to tell.
McKesson acquires reimbursement experts Mosaic Health Care Consultants. Most impressive to me were the educational credentials of their team.
Industry long-timer Tom Underwood lands as EVP of technology at Matria Healthcare after stints at FCG, Paragon Solutions, and IMNET.
Retiring cardiologist and informatics doc Joe Hayes wins a distinguished service award from New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He installed TDS in the hospital in the mid-1990s. UPDATE: a reader tells me it was actually Emtek, not TDS, installed there.
Odd: Google HIStalk and an AdSense ad for a MEDITECH consulting company comes up. I don't know why they'd pay for that.
IBA's takeover of iSoft could happen today. If so, IBA will become the largest non-American HIT vendor. "Potential opposition," i.e. companies with bigger pockets that might be interested, includes McKesson, General Atlantic, and Cerner. UPDATE: it was just announced that it's a done deal -- IBA will pay $277 million in shares for iSoft.
TriZetto Group CFO Jim Malone will leave the company for London to become CFO of Misys. My three Linda Reino thoughts apply here as well.
Vishy Narayanan is named engineering VP for patient tracking company StatCom.
News, rumors, secrets: e-mail me.
Inga's Update
QuadraMed announces the hiring of Brook Carlon as Senior VP of HR. Brook and QuadraMed President Keith Hagen used to work together back at Misys in the M-Transaction group, where both had similar titles.
The Boston Globe cites an interesting dilemma in Massachusetts that is likely found in other areas of the country as well. It appears that the move to electronic records has led to a labor shortage because too few workers are skilled at computers and understanding healthcare. Healthcare facilities and healthcare software companies are fighting for good candidates. Meanwhile, colleges are catching on and adding programs aimed at teaching students some of the basics of healthcare informatics, as well as developing more advanced master degree level programs. Sounds like a great situation for the average HIStalk reader … you are in demand!
The IRS issued a memorandum (warning: PDF) last week indicating that it would not consider donations of IT and supporting services to medical staff as kickbacks that would jeopardize healthcare providers’ not-for-profit status. Medical providers were defined as those who have staff privileges at a hospital. The ruling addresses questions raised about the tax status of a facility that provides “financial assistance to acquire and implement software that is used primarily for creating, maintaining, transmitting or receiving electronic health records for their patients.” So now the question becomes whether or not more hospitals will indeed open their wallets for physicians, or, if hospitals find other reasons not to subsidize for the doctors’ technology needs.
In related news (I sound like a real reporter saying that), CHIME released the results of a survey conducted in February of 117 CIOs. At that time, only 38% of the CIOs responding said that their hospitals plan to take advantage of the new Stark exception and donate health information technology in the form of an EHR to private physicians. The detailed results may be available on the members-only section of the CHIME website to CHIME members. Since I couldn’t access it, I had the CHIME Director of Communications (Anne Wizauer) send me a summary. For those organizations with plans in place, most were providing the physicians with software, helpdesk and/or implementation services. At the time of the survey, many of the CIOs indicated that they were waiting on the IRS ruling before final decisions were made, including those related to the cost models being used to capture the physicians’ portion, contracting, and billing. Back to a comment made a week or so ago, I guess price is not necessarily the barrier to adoption for many doctors. Regardless of who pays for the EMR, it has to be efficient in order to convince doctors to use it.
Cardinal Health purchases medical technology company VIASYS Healthcare for $1.5 billion. The acquisition gives Cardinal a larger global presence and expanded clinical and medical product lines.
E-mail Inga.
comments (6)
1. Anonymous left...
05/16/2007 6:27 am
Peter Strombom...curmudgeonly? If you've spent any time with this guy,
you'd know that he's one of the most generous and affable people on the
planet. Perhaps you were confused by his New Zealander demeanor. Peter is
truly a wonderful person and his CIO replacement at Meriter will have very
large shoes to fill indeed.
2. Dreaming on Inga left...
05/16/2007 7:02 am
Yes, Inga is cool and I loved her haiku so much I decided she needed one,
too.
3. Anonymous left...
05/16/2007 8:39 am
John Wade hasn't retired. He is consulting and is VP of planning etc. He's
still very involved in St Luke's
4. Wompa1 left...
05/16/2007 10:12 am
Anonymous Germanic women
Madness among the geeks
Need cold shower (or a life)
5. The PACS Designer left...
05/17/2007 11:08 am
Having Inga join HIStalk is the best thing since "Sliced Bread"!
