News 12/06/05

From TT in the ED: "Dumped in Show Low - not likely to be on the reference site list." Navapache Regional Medical Center aborts their Emergisoft beta after a year and goes back to scanning paper in the ED, citing product dissatisfaction. Said a hospital spokersperson, "Emergisoft's weak point was its documentation application - it was not user friendly and was forcing our staff to spend more time at the computer bay and less time with the patient. We saw this a patient safety and dissatisfaction issue."

From Anonymous Reader: "What in your opinion is the future outlook of specialized scheduling system vendors like Tempus and PerSe (OneCall)? Will they continue to have a place in the next 4-10 years?" I haven't looked into patient scheduling systems for awhile, but when I last did, the modules from the big HIS companies (those that offer their own scheduling applications) just weren't up to snuff, at least if you want real, enterprise-wide access management and not just a scheduling book replacement. On the other hand, integration is a strong selling point of the full-line offerings. If I were selling a standalone scheduling system, I'd try to morph it into CRM, since scheduling is all about access, convenience, preferences, and upselling. I think Tempus had hit a wall and needed to hook up with a bigger company like QuadraMed, which had openly recommended Tempus to its large clients for years anyway. For many hospitals, web-based scheduling and some of the fancier features just aren't that important, so they will likely pass on bringing in another specialty vendor. I guess I'm waffling ... I think the scheduling vendors can make some sales and money, but I don't see it as a high growth area and the cost of getting new business may be high.

Listening to right now: Polara, followed by Electric Light Orchestra. I know, I like weird stuff.

CIO Field Report
Hospital type: Academic, Multiple Hospital Group, >800 Beds, East
IT Operating Budget: >$20 million
Most important IT projects now underway: EHR final selection, RHIO, physician portal
Systems you’ll be buying within the next three years: EHR
Best application vendors (based on quality, support, value, development, etc.): FCG (portal)
Hot IT skills in the market: leadership
Hottest people in the  HIT industry (visionaries, leaders, stars): Glaser (more than a thought leader)

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Cerner touts a reduction in pediatric medication errors at Nemours, but their PR spin is elbowed out of the headlines by a newly published study in Pediatrics from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh called "Unexpected Increased Mortality After Implementation of a Commercially Sold Computerized Physician Order Entry System." The mortality rate of their patients went from 2.8% to 6.56% after Cerner Millennium was installed, despite a rosy summary of the implementation's success from Cerner and the hospitals' CEO in their 2003 press release. I don't have access to the full text of the article to check their methodology, but my initial reaction (as it always is) is skeptical. If you have Cerner experience (or especially if you're from Children's) what do you think? Is it the product or the users?

On that topic, from Anonymous Reader II: "This reveals what everyone already knows but Cerner tries to cover up -- Pharmnet is a foreign pharmacy system with an internal INTERFACE. The need to re-enter orders here and elsewhere is the giveaway that the Millennium core doesn't have medication integration. Otherwise, physicians and pharmacists would see and manipulate the same order, with no need to re-enter. They have issues with hold and suspend orders that are due to sloppy work by new designers." I've harped relentlessly (from experience) at the bolted-on, afterthought medication management systems that are wildly oversold by just every major HIS vendor. My assessment of those I'm familiar with: Cerner, McKesson, and IDX are poor (although improving, but working elbow-deep in old code, fighting outdated design, and with a propensity to break a lot of functions trying to rush new ones to market.) If Eclipsys delivers as promised in Sunrise 4.5, the bar will be set way over the heads of everyone else. If not, then you might as well throw darts at what's out there because it's all marginal at best, with most pharmacy systems barely passing the ISMP's field test of patient safety. It's asking a bit much to take a 10-20 year old application designed for nurse order entry and pharmacy cart fills and suddenly transform into a highly usable, clinically sound medication management system.

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I'm really anxious to see whether HIMSS cranks up an indignant rebuttal to the Cerner article. You would have thought HUP had insulted Steve Lieber's mother the way HIMSS came out swinging after the hospital's negative CPOE article involving TDS a few months back. Inappropriate, if you ask me, and overly protective of the vendors from which most of their money is derived. They'll happily run expensive ads that border on outright lies and yet condemn a scholarly research article just because it steps on their pet cause? Please. CPOE can stand on its own two feet without HIMSS propping it up (or if it can't, then let those in the trenches say so.)

Industry lifer Kerry de Vallette is named sales EVP of IMACS.

Spartanburg Regional Medical Center deploys four pharmacy robots that deliver meds to nursing stations. Hope they made them heavy so some junkie doesn't grab them and run.

Giving themselves the nickname of Streamline Health didn't help LanVision, whose Q3 losses tripled.

Speaking of name changes, ProxyMed changes its "brand identity" to MedAvant Healthcare Solutions. They cite the usual high-falutin' marketeer crap about how the new name signifies all kinds of wonderfulness and progress right down to the etymological origins of the contrived "word" with a capital letter rising priapically from its midsection. They also insist that it be pronounced in a haughty Bostonian kind of way: "Med-A-Vaunt."

In yet another rebranding episode, pharmacy packaging company Integrated Healthcare Systems becomes Talyst. Like the other two companies above, a substandard name was the only thing holding them back from their rendezvous with destiny.

Carolinas HealthCare System can continue to hide the non-salary benefits it provides its CEO, as a newspaper lawsuit against the hospital is dismissed.

Hospital CIO Salary of the Week: Albany Medical Center, Albany, NY: $181,396. HIStalk CIO Enrichment Index: 295.

Idiotic Hospital Lawsuit of the Week: nurses threatening a strike at hospitals owned by Appalachian Regional Healthcare sue the company for requiring them to work 40 hours to receive 40 hours' of pay. Previously, they worked only 36 hours for the same amount of money. Ironically, ARH was formed nearly 50 years ago by the United Mine Workers of America, one of the country's most corrupt and militant labor unions.

MedSeek wins a healthcare website design award.

The huge and privately held North Carolina analytical software vendor SAS says it's willing to sell out to Oracle for $20 billion in cash, but I think CEO Jim Goodknight has his tongue in cheek.

A group of big New York hospitals will push patient smart cards. Sorry, I drifted off there for a second and woke up thinking it was 1999.

Kevin Pettet is promoted to EVP of client operations for Picis. He's a former West Point cadet and Army officer with two Master's degrees, both of which earn my respect.

Clearwave co-founder Gary Austin is named director and SVP of practice management vendor eLifecare Solutions.

News, rumors, ideas: e-mail me.