HIStalk Quotes
News 05/18/07
From Hoosier-Daddy: "Re: Indianapolis hospital. Is failed Indy hospital Clarian? St. Vincent Health - Indianapolis has activated SCM Patient Lists, Results Viewing, interfaces, and Clin Doc (Vital Signs and I&O flowsheets) feeding a single SCM database that serves the Indianapolis, Carmel, and Kokomo facilities." Maaaaaybe. I still don't have confirmation, so I'm not willing to say so just yet. Good guess, anyway. Think any vendors are sweating out there?
From RumorStarter: "Re: HCA. Rumor has it that HCA is seeking an ambulatory replacement solution and has an RFP out on the street. Any word on who they are looking to?"
From Can'tstandya: "Re: Drexel v Allscripts. Maybe there is some legitimacy to the point that the Allscripts NE Users Group is having difficulty with the product and company too. I believe the NE group disclaimed any knowledge of the earlier e-mail, although that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't having problems. I figure they'd say so on the record.
From Dr. Amos Wetherby: "Re: Cerner. Many physicians work as CMIO or physician leader while consulting/selling for Cerner. Examples are at Shriner's corporate, Emory, and BayCare. ALL of those disclose their dual roles when talking with clients. Where this can go wrong is deceiving prospective buyers into believing they are talking to a physician that has no ties to the vendor. This has been the case for many years in Madison (witnessed firsthand). McKesson has done the same at Vanderbilt." I guess that's one way to boost physician acceptance at client sites - buy 'em. I can't decide which I find most distasteful: vendors for doing it (especially if not disclosed), hospitals for allowing it, or physicians for shilling out. Caveat emptor big time.
From Matthew Holt: "Re: Health 2.0. Your previous three respondents have been somewhat fooled by Scott Shreeve's chart. Much as I like Scott and am a supporter of what he's done and is doing, I think Scott is being way over ambitious in what he's calling Health 2.0. Health 2.0 is a just a term that groups together the healthcare use of Web 2.0, which is in itself just a term for easy (& cheap!) to create and easy to use software that encompasses search, wikis, blogs, video, online communities, mash-ups and all the other stuff that O'Reilly has been talking about for a few years. There's no magic in it; it's just a description of recognizable technologies that are an advance on the first generation of web tools. These tools and techniques are going to be used in health care. This has nothing to do with 'outcomes', 'quality', and 'health reform' and I guarantee you that Michael Porter hasn't even heard the term. Right now no one has a clue how health care will adopt Health 2.0 tools and techniques. Will they become real separate businesses as, for instance, Steve Case hopes Revolution will be? Will they be ever so slowly integrated into health plans and providers' technology use? Will they become a separate consumer-driven piece that is run by non-profits and be the successor to the listservs that have been the focus for, say, cancer groups' online activities? Will they be all this and more? No one knows. I've been watching health care develop online as closely as anyone in the last 10-15 years, and all I know is that in Rumsfeld's terms these are 'known unknowns' and there's a good chance that there are also 'unknown unknowns' in the mix too. As yet, almost no one in health care is familiar with Web 2.0. I asked a Northern California HIMSS audience about it in December 2006 and almost no one in the audience could define it. (Yup, that was a Northern California audience which lives in the heart of Web 2.0 country...) So the issue is, how are these tools and technologies going to be used, what does that mean for health care organizations, and doctors and patients, and how fast will it matter? And the answers? Well let's just say that if you want to know more you can come to my conference on the topic! More at www.health2con.com." Note the subtle way Matthew worked his conference into the conversation? If you sign up, put HIStalk in the Promotional Code and says he'll actually slip me a couple of dollars for the otherwise free ad he just got. See, I'm with the 2.0 program by being transparent enough to tell you, unlike some of those demo docs.
An analyst lists Cerner among the five companies that Microsoft should consider buying.
Speaker of Cerner, Neal Patterson has a few young entrepreneurs over to Casa Tick Tock to talk bidness as they occasionally do. The CEO of investment trader Bats Trading said he got into business to get out of the boring corporate world, finally having fun instead of working. Neal probably had mixed feelings about that statement: the guy was a former Cerner programmer who was apparently thrilled to escape.
Christus Health will build a $21 million, 43,000 square foot data center in San Antonio.
HIMSS AsiaPac07 is running now in Singapore.
Schedule Maximizer from SCI Solutions goes live at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center (NY), run by the newly outsourced scheduling team provided by American Medical Alert Corporation. Rollout of SCI's radiology scheduling and eligibility are imminent. Big place: 864 beds and 40 clinics.
Misys gets a $2 million LIS deal with a Vancouver system and also announces go-live of PM at UroPartners (IL). Hey, that trip to Urope cost me 800 Uros.
William Osler Health Centre of Toronto buys the whole Picis CareSuite, with one hospital already live on ED PulseCheck.
I wouldn't pay $278 million for iSoft, but IBA would. If CSC gives its approval, that is, remembering that they have the final say as the main NHS contractor under which the struggling vendor flounders.
Obstetrics software vendor LMS Medical Systems turns in a good quarter for a microscopically sized company.
A contract nurse who killed a patient by administering undiluted KCl IV instead of Lasix won't be prosecuted, but you can bet she'll be sued. As is often the case, the nurse was working without having a pharmacist on duty and pulled the wrong med (oddly not all that rare given that potassium chloride and furosemide are wildly dissimilar, but often given together.) She fessed up immediately, to her credit. The hospital is considering Pyxis instead of an open drug closet. Injected KCl is mostly known as being a key ingredient in Dr. Kevorkian's death machine and a staple in executions, so obviously her patient never had a chance.
NPfIT is dragging behind, so UK hospitals are buying parts for their obsolete computers on eBay.
Brook Carlton gets QuadraMed shares just for joining. Must be hard to find HR VPs.
LRGHealthcare ($180 million in revenue) takes heat for executive salaries. The CEO gets $343K and the board pleads its inability to do anything other than helplessly watch the violent interplay of supply and demand set his salary without their involvement. A local conservative blogger gets off a great shot: "Of course, if you ask any of these handsomely remunerated people why health care costs so much, they'll blame the poor, the uninsured, insurance companies, the lack of reimbursement of Medicare from the Feds, etc. Overpaid administrative overhead? No way!"
Geisinger Health System, always the innovator, is offering a 90-warranty on surgeries, covering complications without charging extra (that's a novel idea only in healthcare, where making mistakes sometimes pays better than not.)
Sometimes the ambulance backs up over you while you're chasing it: two lawyers who created a mini-industry in finding patients willing to sue Jewish Hospital (KY) are now being sued by the hospital for making what it says were false statements hoping to force settlements. Almost all the suits against the hospital were dropped because the lawyers dumped their clients, claiming they couldn't afford to continue. Despite their claims of MRSA negligence, the lawyers never had the cases reviewed by a medical expert and kept postponing trials.
Who should e-mail me now: potential sponsors, witty funsters, holders of important secrets, and anyone willing to provide me pitiful validation with shameless fawning. Have a good weekend, OK?
Re: Dr. Amos Wetherby: "Re: Cerner......I happen to know the CMIO at
BayCare well ....both of you commenting on this should do your homework and
post accurate facts when conducting your Cerner bashing. Go after the
vendors you clearly do not have appetite for all you want, but when you
cross over to healthcare organizations and their people - get your data
verified before you post and attack them.
Re: lawsuit over nurse administering KCL. If anybody is at fault, it should
be the hospital. This is by no means the first time concentrated KCL was
given by mistake like that and killed a patient... but I haven't heard of
it happening for years because most responsible institutions have removed
all forms of concentrated KCL from the floors and direct access to nurses
so they cannot be accidentally given.
RE: GMH...I don't think that the post said that the CMIO at BayCare worked
for Cerner...I think it said that CMIO's and Physicians work for some of
these hospitals as examples. So, if the CMIO at BayCare isn't Cerner...I
bet a Physician is instead. Besides...when Physicians work for a vendor,
they have to continue to work in some sort of practice to keep their
knowledge of medicine up as well as get a pulse for what other physicians
think of the solution. Not one physician or nurse that works for vendors
does not still practice medicine at a hospital. The problem with all of
this is...it's at the hospital that has all of the vendor's solutions these
individuals are working for.
From Dr. Amos Wetherby: "Re: Cerner: Regarding your comment - here is a
blinding flash of the obvious...consultants get paid to work at clients.
Consultants get paid more money when their company sells more work.
Consultants sell work. Consultants get paid to work at clients. Consultants
get paid more money when their company sells more work. Consultants sell
work.....see a pattern? It does not matter if it is physicians, CPAs,
attorneys, or general HIT consultants. It happens everywhere. Think of
something more important to say.
RE: Anon...I believe if you read the comment, the underlying theme to this
whole thing is about physicians who are being paid by vendors...posing as a
physician at that hospital site WITHOUT disclosing this to the visiting
client that he/she gets their paycheck from the vendor. If I am paying
money to go see a vendor's product and go to the site they recommend. Then
I walk in and am greeted by a physician that says he/she works there, but
never tells me that they work for the vendor and of COURSE they would say
something nice about the product...then yeah...that would highly skew
anyones opinion of the vendor if everyone at that site loves the product
but all the while work for the vendor. I am sorry...but that's just wrong
in all ways possible. Yes, it's not big news that a physician works for a
vendor as their consultant...but posing as a physician only without telling
the visiting client you are being paid by the vendor...and then sell that
prospective buyer is just wrong.
Re Indy Hospital: I work on the team at St. V's, SCM going very well there,
must be someone else.
