News 05/18/07
posted 05/17/2007
HIStalk
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?