News 07/21/06

From Stueym: "Despite Ken Kizer's protest to the contrary, the UK Health Service Journal reports as follows: (you have to register to access) 'David Nicholson is the only NHS candidate on the shortlist for chief executive of the service, HSJ understands. Other figures being interviewed this week include leaders of UK and US private health companies ... Ken Kizer, undersecretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs from 1995-99, and since then chair, then chief executive officer of US healthcare information company Medsphere, is also on the shortlist ... The list is understood to contain four candidates in total ... Dr Kizer’s successor at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr Jonathan B. Perlin, was also understood to have applied for the role, but last Wednesday announced he would be taking up a new position running Nashville-based healthcare provider HCA. There have also been persistent rumours that Dr Don Berwick, chief executive officer of the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, was on the list, but a spokesperson said Dr Berwick did not believe this to be the case.'" All good guys for the job, but it wouldn't be easy to go into another country whose healthcare system is quite unlike our own, with politics and populist outsider distrust added into the mix. Surely our own system is screwed up enough to keep these guys challenged here.

From Venny: "Re: QuadraMed's new sale. Is this the same hospital that QuadraMed just signed? If so, depending on who gets the deal, Affinity may never be installed. I wonder if there were any 'outs' in the contract." Link. Looks like larger organizations are bidding to manage the hospital, which is QuadraMed's newest customer. Seems like a bad time to be embarking on a multi-year systems replacement. For those with experience in changes of hospital ownership, is it likely that the hospital will back out of their Affinity contract?

From Anonymous: "What local paper re El Camino? Can't find an article on Google. New CEO is at $546k which is more than his predecessor whose salary was kept secret." The copy-and-paste article I got came from the Mountain View Voice. I didn't include the link originally because searching their site failed to turn up the article, but I just now grabbed the last few editions in desperation and ran across the story. I haven't heard any response from Eclipsys, not that I expected to near earnings time. If they don't make a profit now, I'd say their chances of success are minuscule, given the increasing dominance of their competitors, their limited product line (including former cash cow TSI, which they've let wander off,) and their lack of sales despite a pretty good product and a dynamic new CEO. I like the company, but I struggle to find something positive to say about their business performance and that's a shame. It's really sad that they've alienated El Camino, which is to clinical IT as Cape Canaveral was to the space program in the early 1960s.

Speaking of Ken Kizer, he'll chair Healthcare Day at LinuxWorld in San Francisco next month. "Linux and open source software are changing the way that healthcare IT is created and delivered by today's major IT vendors. The cost savings and efficiencies inherent in the open source model are creating significant market opportunities for vendors and developers involved in the healthcare market." I'd like to think that's true, but I'm not seeing it personally. Are you?

The VA's general counsel is quitting after being pounded by Congress for resisting recommendations to centralize the organization's security under the CIO. He's the fifth executive to leave since the infamous laptop incident, although the VA hasn't fired the employee to whom it belonged because he's resisting through legal channels. Unless he was lying, he had permission to work from home using the laptop, as I recall.

Are you well-informed, amusing, or both? Why not write something for HIStalk? Guest articles are usually well-received here and I'm willing to share the bully pulpit. Have you had a really bad or really good vendor experience, met someone who inspired you, had some divine insight into the nature of the HIT universe, or been mad and want to get it off your chest? All are welcome here - just e-mail me your opus, anonymous or otherwise.

The Decatur, IL paper runs a story on the first MEDITECH implementation in 13-hospital Hospital Sisters Health System. I'd like to run more of their press releases, but unfortunately they don't use a national service to distribute them and, even more puzzlingly, those on their site aren't dated, making them pretty much useless to someone trying to write news about them.

Strange: hospitals can now buy organic foods through MedAssets, although the ones I've worked for wouldn't have a clue what to do with it unless it came frozen in an aluminum pan for reheating by the most un-cheflike people in the building. Surely of all the unhealthy things we subject patients to, food should be the least of their worries. Not only will you not get rest, quiet, fresh air, pleasant surroundings, privacy, or an unhurried recovery, you are likely to be poked, prodded, infected nosocomially, and subject to a long list of possible medical mistakes. If you're well enough to worry whether your soggy broccoli was sprayed with pesticides before it and all the nutrients were boiled out of it, I'd say go home where you're safer.

Kaiser Permanente's Northwest region president resigns, seemingly because of computer problems that hurt earnings. "Kaiser launched a computer system to govern billing for its high-deductible health plan and for Medicare enrollees, but halted billing for both products in June 2005 due to a technical glitch." If you had all the money that various tentacles of Kaiser have spent on botched IT projects, you could be up there on the dais with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, giving it away to the less fortunate, which would be just about everyone.

Allscripts gets a 38-physician TouchWorks deal from a Birmingham cardiology practice.

Cerner shows no sign of cooling off: just-released Q2 numbers show revenue up 19%, EPS up 16%, guidance for 2006 up 26%. The stock's down nearly 4% in after-hours trading, still hovering barely above its 52-week low.

The Institute of Medicine says medication errors injure 1.5 million Americans each year, 1/4 of which are preventable. The average hospitalized patient can expect one medication error per day, as any of us deep into the medication and clinical side of the house could have guessed. Their #1 recommendation was e-prescribing, with all prescriptions to be "written" electronically by 2010. Certainly there are few arguments why this shouldn't be the case and a long list of reasons why it should, although some of the software out there reeks for that purpose.

Your thoughts, funny stories, or juicy rumors: e-mail me. Mr. HIStalk loves him some user interaction, baby.