HIStalk Quotes
News 11/01/06
From Anonymous: "Ronald V. Aprahamian is a board member at FCGI and owns 620,500 as of 4/25/06. Rumor is he brought in the new CEO to polish it up and sell it like he has every other company in which he has taken a major position."
From Justin: "Robots take over hospital. Just something fun for you to link to." Link. That is pretty darned funny. Thanks.
From Scot Silverstein: "Re: Kaiser implementation. Do I hear the word 'mismanagement' being spoken? If this is even close to true, I believe a detailed investigation and account of how this came about is mandatory, as is a thorough, impartial reassessment by industry and academic experts (and I don't mean simply Management Information Systems personnel) about the assumptions and paradigms used in healthcare IT leadership, development and implementation. Every dollar wasted in clinical IT misadventure is a dollar lost to other pressing needs in the healthcare system, which, out on the golf course, may seem to be an endless cornucopia of dollars, but from the perspective of, say, an ER doc or internist, is anything but."
From Beaux Brummel: "Re: consumer driven healthcare. What are hospitals doing to provide prospective patients with an accurate cost estimate prior to delivering care? That's becoming a major issue for us."
From Nocs: "NHS Nurse vs. MD. This is an interesting blog try about nurses and MDs." Link. Now I know what "quinsy" is.
From Anonymous: "Re: Siemens Soarian. Here's the story on the rumors about Siemens hiring Soarian Implementation resources. They currently have approximately 125 Soarian modules in active implementations going on. They are struggling to keep up and are hiring people to stay ahead of the demand (good problem to have!) Additionally, 115 contracts signed (300 facilities). More than 50 facilities are live on Soarian Clinical modules, and nine facilities are live Soarian Financials. The bottom line is that this stuff is real and is catching on. If they are suffering, it is clearly in the area of marketing and getting the positive stories out to the public. They could learn a lesson from GE in this area!"
A Computerworld article talks about InterSystems and its plans for Cache'. They're hoping to go mainstream with Cache' 2007, expanding outside of their 80% healthcare market. Mentioned: Zen, an AJAX framework with prebuilt components, which "provides a shared-objects benefit for server and client that balances the chattiness of AJAX apps with performance demands on the server." Jim Klein of QuadraMed is quoted (although not identified as having come there from InterSystems) saying Zen will give their 200 developers a 20-40% improvement in speed. Another new tool called Jalapeno allows Java coders the ability to do database stuff. InterSystems facts stated: 100,000 licensed users, $200 million in revenue. Downloads and more info are here.
Eclipsys announces Q3 numbers: revenue and earnings were flat over the same quarter last year. It's not good that growth was nonexistent in this booming market, but at least they stayed profitable. Related: Cooley Dickinson Hospital (MA) signs for Sunrise Clinical Manager, Pharmacy, KBA, ED, Critical Care, and KBC.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (TN) creates its first CIO position as part of its five-year plan.
A big British institutional investor threatens to liquidate its position in companies with sloppy corporate governance. One of the two firms named: Misys.
Medical image guidance software vendor BrainLAB gets a big contract to establish the world's first fully digital neuroscience center at Singapore General Hospital. Components of their Intelligent Treatment Framework include the Novalis Shaped Beam Surgery system, which is the only part I'm familiar with.
McKesson files Q2 numbers: revenue up 5%, EPS up 37%, beating expectations and raising guidance. Provider Technologies made $33 million in profit, up 27%.
Surgical Information Systems names Ed Daihl as CEO, replacing interim Bob Schlotman. He comes from Manugistics, which sent him this offer letter back in 2004 just in case you're curious.
Emageon will resell the Vitrea visualization software from Vital Images.
QuadraMed gets a $20.5 million order from all VA hospitals for its encoder, upgrading it to its VIP Compliance Suite. QD says 50% of the deal is new business.
Medsphere announces new management team members: Rusty Lewis as SVP/CTO, Denean Rivera as SVP of services, and Kathy Doub-English as VP of product management. Lewis and Rivera have a broad healthcare IT background that's heavy on McKesson and Bridge Medical, while Doub-English is an RN coming over from Picis and formerly of Compucare.
Meditech files its Q3 reports today: revenue up 15.1%, EPS up 14.1%. You would hardly be alone in proclaiming them to be the best big company in healthcare IT, not to mention the arguably largest in terms of hospitals and users. They are as honest and plain as Pilgrims up there as far as I can tell, tipping a zero on the BS-o-Meter even though their "it just works" software hardly arouses fame-seeking CIOs.
VisualMED licenses some of its modules to Post Logic, which is bidding for a big French government electronic medical records project. The deal is worth up to $5 million.
Seagate will offer a laptop hard drive with built-in encryption. Smart.
Mediware files a federal lawsuit against consulting and barcode ID vendor Korchek Technologies, claiming that company breached its contract with Mediware and interfered with its customer relationships.
News, rumors, my share of the St. Jude's CIO placement fee: e-mail me.
Answer to Beaux Brummel. HTP Inc is offering a product that combines
eligibility, financial information, health plan fee scheduals with hospital
fee schedules to provide the patient a complete financial picture. Visit
their web site at www.htp-inc.com.
to Beaux Brummel - If you catch the latest news, BCBSFL and Humana started
doing real-time (or near real-time) payments and eligibility through
AthenaHealth. Should allow a provider to find out how much to charge at the
point of care based on eligibility and paid amounts to date...
Siemen Soarian up and live??? I have only seen bits and pieces of Soarian
with other Siemens products like Invision being used while Siemens develops
the rest. That can hardly be touted as a Siemens success story.
The Siemens Soarian comment is more like an ad from the inside. It is well
known that Soarian is and has been a failure. I ask the previous commenter
to post ANY positive reference for both clinicals and financials. The
Numbers they tout are not referenceable, in trouble, or have not even been
implemented.
Siemens just freed up some Soarian installers from a big install in their
home state that has been terminated by the customer. I won't mention the
customer site by name because they may not want it to be public yet, but
Siemens knows. In fact, the story is complicated and may not be Siemens'
fault entirely. Nevertheless, they have some free staff to deploy.
If I were Eclipsys, I would be singing about the Cooley signing as they
were just featured as one of the better hospitals at patient safety in
Newsweek a couple of weeks back. Cooley's Med Rec? Piece of paper with the
patient, updated at every encounter. Not high tech, just highly effective.
IMHO
