News 11/29/05

From Nobody Asked Me But .....: "According to this article, dated 11/22/05, Cerner Patient Accounting(ProFit) created more than 1,000 blackhole accounts. Lucky for the hospital they found the error. I wonder how many insurance carriers will refuse to pay based on their 'timely filing rules?'"

From On Behalf of the Academy: "Medical Blog Award... your opportunity to claim the leadership role in the technology category." Ahh, another blog awards competition! Like the "100 Most Wired,"they are subjective, meaningless, and I want one. Thanks for nominating HIStalk. Looks like voting will follow, so vote your conscience.

I should mention that Anony-Mouse has posted a great analysis of Cerner and Epic over in HIStalk Discussion. You won't find this kind of detail anywhere that I know of. I appreciate the contribution. If you have experience with these or other HIT apps, feel free to post your thoughts over there.

I've rearranged the main HIStalk page a little bit with almost imperceptible improvements, such as making sure you can't miss the crass links for purchasing the HIStalk Yearbook 2003 and HIStalk Yearbook 2004. What a great Christmas gift!

Eclipsys is showing a new release of Sunrise RIS at RSNA this week. And in other ECLP news, their Pocket XA PDA application wins an InfoWorld 100 technology award.

Philips is at RSNA too, of course, and they're demonstrating " Tightly Integrated and Comprehensive IT Solutions" that came from elsewhere (Epic and Stentor,) kind of an OEM approach to applications.

MercuryMD announces a sale to Chicago's Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare.

Here's a heartwarming story if you're a fan of lawsuits. A man is injured in an ATV demonstration when the (idiot) salesman does a donut and throws him off. Thanks to a bizarre, only-in-America company, he can start spending his future windfall now instead of waiting until the dealership he's suing pays him off. "David discovered that he could receive cash today if he agreed to give up a portion of the future cash settlement of his lawsuit. The pricing of the lawsuit funding was expensive, but it seemed fair when David learned that he did not have to pay back the lawsuit funding if his case lost or did not settle for enough cash to pay back the lawsuit funding."  

The provision of healthcare is becoming more virtual and less tied to a location (I'll have to write an editorial on that sometime.) This radiologist is an independent contractor who works entirely from his home's basement office, reading images online.

Hospital CIO Salary of the Week: Lewiston Hospital, Lewiston, PA: $95,969. HIStalk CIO Enrichment Index: 141.

I've never run short of criticism about hospital group purchasing organizations (GPOs.) The Fort Worth Weekly has an outstanding  piece called "Hijacking at the Hospital" that lays out Novation's story (and that of its troubled sibling Neoforma) for laypeople. "... Novation ...has become the largest broker of hospital and medical supplies in the country, wielding enormous influence over the lives of patients, the safety of hospital workers, and the zooming costs of healthcare in this country. But it’s also a giant in trouble. Several small medical supply manufacturers that say they have been squeezed out of the market by Novation are lining up to sue, and the company has already paid out millions of dollars in settlements. Congress is in its third year of investigating Novation’s activities. At least one state attorney general is investigating the company. And now the company is a target of a Dallas-based investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office into massive allegations of Medicare fraud — a probe that has been hampered by the deaths, within the last 18 months, of two of the prosecutors involved in it. The irony is that Novation and other entities like it — called group purchasing organizations — were invented to help hospitals save money. But instead of saving patients money, many people charge, Novation, in effect, is working on behalf of manufacturers and suppliers, helping them — and Novation itself — to make as much money as possible, to the detriment of taxpayers and the healthcare-buying public." I won't try to summarize the article because it's worth your full read. Everything I've seen and thought over the years is in there. Kudos to them.

Government contracting is sure confusing. Northrop Grumman gets the HHS contract to develop an NHIN architecture. They subcontract to HealthBridge, a midwestern RHIO. HealthBridge's platform is Axolotl. So why are we taxpayers paying everyone except Axolotl to do the work when they're the one who built the product?

Memorial Hermann will use Zynx clinical decision support. They're calling it a partnership, although one partner doesn't usually write a check to the other one.

Stock message board droppings:

Cerner
"CERN has 2 dozen concurrent deployments in the Southern Cluster, half of which will be live by end of Q1 2006. It took IDX two years to get ONE hospital live in London. Fujitsu made the right move by taking CERN. I bet the CERN UK parking lot is full by 6am."

"IDX's failure at NHS is only part of the story. All of those IDX Carecast customers are now up for grabs. Maybe Cerner will get the 'lastword'!"

Eclipsys
"I hear another round of layoffs are approaching and salaries are capped - no raises for anyone (but somehow I suspect that the upper brass will get increases). How much longer can this sinking ship stay afloat?"

"I am sitting beside an employee who is getting increases in pay, is too busy to take a holiday and is happy the 2003 fiasco of web based products is finally behind the company."