News 08/19/05

From Misys Tiger: "Inside dirt on Misys: Another year of results that lag the market and while CEOs of the hospital and phys office divisions come and go, Tom Skelton remains the one constant (with his small band of cronies from Pittsburgh). When are the Brits going to tire of his poor record- not one year of above market growth results since taking over the top spot. What a lack of vision around here."

From Anonymous Reader: "Actually, the President makes $400,000 (since 2001) and I am not sure we are getting our money's worth but that is a different discussion. I see no reason why working for a non-profit (remember, also non-loss) organization. A large health system such as Partners is a very challenging leadership environment and does indeed require good talent. Take a look at some other organizations that have suffered (AHERF) with bad decision making/leadership. Remember, 'no money, no mission.' The price of bad leadership is well documented." I was thinking the Pres had been given a raise, but I was too lazy to check. On AHERF, I seem to remember that they were paying that bad leadership quite well also, so I'd still argue that results vs. salary is not a linear relationship.

From Anonymous Reader II: "The implementation of Cerner's Millennium shrink wrap community hospital solution is officially a failure at Wilson Jones Hospital in Sherman, TX. They issued an RFP to select a new system/vendor. The CFO who drove the Cerner decision is gone along with other executives and the IT Director." Thanks for that info ... anyone have details on what went wrong?

From Anonymous Reader III: "Kaiser is trying to standardize across 100’s of Hospitals and MOB’s and Multi states. Fixing and standardizing process is hard enough between departments in one hospital -- multiply that by 100’s. It would be much worse with McKesson or Cerner."

You may have seen this comment below: "How do you feel about industry recruiters?" Strangely enough, I like them. I've been placed in jobs by recruiters twice myself. One was a great fit, one wasn't. They're like your personal agent, trying to package you up, get you more money, and find good opportunities you might miss on your own (although their commission on bad ones is the same, so it's up to you to say no.) I've hired people through recruiters and, while it's always questionable whether it's worth it, I like having that business decision of picking their candidate if they're enough better than mine, given the commission it will cost me. I always wonder about Hersher, Witt-Kiefer, and the other CIO recruiters. So many CIOs fail, most of them placed through well-paid recruiters, that you wonder if they're any better than throwing darts at resumes.

Forgot to mention the screen shot contest. Right before I posted the "no one guessed right" message for the first pic, ignatz correctly guessed Vitalworks over in HIStalk Discussion. And not long after I posted the second one, Caffeinated pegged the MEDITECH ED module shot. Say, wouldn't this be fun to continue ... if you'd get off your duff (well, actually you can stay there) and send me some screen shots! Surely as an HIT person you can manage that, right?

I have two interviews in the can, but I'm too short on time to get them up today. Stay tuned! Imagine a long day at work, mowing the lawn, cleaning up, eating, and opening the mail, leaving about an hour to catch up on e-mails, dash off a quick HIStalk, and go straight to bed. If you think this is easy, then I'll pat myself on the back for making it look like it is.

A JAMIA article is the third to present a case where CPOE-related errors harmed a patient, this time a homegrown system at NY Presbyterian that contributed to a three-fold KCl overdose.

The Zotob Win2K worm takes EMRs offline for two hours at Dartmouth Hitchcock. Like the old song goes: "Patches, I'm depending on you son."

Here's a local paper's interview with Dave Garrett, former Baptist Pensacola CIO now at Palmetto Health in South Carolina. Dave follows several recent Palmetto CIOs, all of them named Tim Thompson.

Even Alexander Haig is a healthcare IT expert. To think, I've wasted all these years working in hospitals and IT, unlike all these new experts who've never been outside the beltway or held a real job.

From the stock market message boards:

Cerner
"I work at Allina Health system in MN and we bought EPIC and spent 400 million at last count. The entire system sucks! Every employee from nurses and doctors to HUCs and transport aids hate it. The CEO who is formerly from Kaiser just put a hiring freeze on because we're going bankrupt. We've had so many mistakes and at 3 pt's that I know of almost died directly because the system is so cumbersome to work that they almost hemorrhaged to death before we got any blood ordered. No kidding this is true! I just had to vent. I think someone out there is making a lot of money on EPIC but who?"

"Don't blame Epic. Blame Allina I.S. department. They can't implement anything correctly. They even screwed up a Dictaphone dictation implementation! I.S. is total mess at Allina."

"No, I do blame EPIC and I blame Dick Pettingill. Those EPIC geeks were on my unit for a month and they had no idea what nurses and doctors do. They had no idea that we have another 8 hour job to do and that means taking care of patients. this is nothing but a billing system that is doomed to fail because the people that are supposed to use it can't."