News 12/1/06

//Googling "Justen Deal" brings up a Kaiser sponsored link to their HealthConnect website. I found today that Googling "HIStalk" does the same//

ROTFLMAO!!! Good Gracie, someone has to STOP THE FUNNY! My heart can't take it. ;-)

I'm wondering if this monumental ham-handedness can be attributed to Edelman (of Wal-Mart fake blog/"blog war room" fame). They're hitting me like ten times a day.

Re: Misys - very creepy - especially the "report on your colleagues" part. But it's the mother or all sure things this will backfire, and when it does it will be like 4th of July fireworks.

Re: JobRants - thanks for pointing out that site. I'd like to point out that online rants aren't just about personal whining. They're about pressuring for cultural and/or organizational change from the "outside" - especially when there are strong sanctions against rocking the boat on the inside. One voice is a whiner. An ocean of voices (which can only be aggregated online) is a problem and a mandate for change.

From HITPain: "Re: WSJ article. Intel Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., British Petroleum, and others...

Can't blame them as employers dealing with huge health care costs for trying to do something. Just amazing how clueless they can be in their approach though. Seems like no one realizes that you could do PHR things for the better part of the last decade. Some of them pretty decent too.

But, they're creating a distraction from the main effort - the basic block and tackling of automating the core record keeping of health care. There's been a lot of chatter on this blog and others about is it worth it or not. I think the jury came back on that a while ago. It is worth it. It can save money. It can improve outcomes.

Automation is going to save health care expense and allow us to do more (or maybe keep pace) for less total expense.

Efficient / well managed organizations are going to get the job done economically (and many already have). Organizations that don't manage quite as well, will still get the job done, but at a higher cost and with more struggles along the way.

Probably more fun being a critic from the sideline than to be on the front lines of getting the job done. But, what ever your vantage point, this is happening, and it's going to stick.

Would be nice if forums like this helped share the knowledge and best practices of how to get through this as efficiently as possible instead of becoming a soapbox stolen by nut cases and disgruntled employees.

Re: Contribution to 'Negative Blogs' was specifically mentioned. Consequences of refusal to enter this information were not specified."

I do think you control or at least influence the use of your blog. You can chose what to let people post or not post.

In it's simplest form, if you hired a babysitter and they spent their time telling all your neighbors what an ass**** you were, you'd probably get upset. If they told you they didn't charge you for it (did it on their walk over and walk home) would that make it ok? No, you'd get a different one and wouldn't feel the slightest bit guilty about it. And you shouldn't.

I agree with your final thought. I'm tired of reading through a bunch of employee garbage to find the gems that used to be here about our industry. Count my vote to ditch it

I would back a ban on 'my employer sucks'rants as they are starting to get a bit tedious.The rest is very useful,informative and a great read.

re: Meditech seems to be unpopular with its employees.

Mr HIS-Talk - Your comments are on the money. If you don't like it get some chutzpah and leave. I imagine these people who are complaining do nothing to control their own situations and are the same people who don't vote in elections but enjoy complaining about their elected leaders anyway. I can already hear excuses coming... 'but what about my family I support, but what about my lifestyle, but I love my customers and believe in our products, but what about this, but what about that'... get some chutzpah and quit playing the victim. You control who you work for.

Whether or not your readers start a project to clone your genetics, I bet many more people will still read HIS-Talk than JH's DNA sequence once it hits the web. That would be a tough decision over early morning coffee. Gee, HIS-Talk or DNA? Oh what will I do? Choices, choices.

I shall choose to disagree somewhat about the negative blogging ban proposal (I'm confident blokes at the former Enron, WorldCom or other such companies would be in discourse with any negative-posting ban and would have WELCOMED such an opportunity to know what was going on "inside OZ"). The HISTalkster maintains "Yoda" power and can choose to post or not to post a contribution depending on the severity and trust about the validity of the rant. Such determinations will be a business decision the HISTalkster has to make (since he/she is doing this blog as a for-profit thing right....RIGHT?). None of us (present company included!) should like to see this blog digress into a Jerry Springer-like event complete with "Who's the daddy" types of postings. Still, there are plenty of small fish at companies like Kieser, Epic, Cerner, etc. that DON'T have the privilege of being exposed to some of the data, or influences that significantly impact their employment. Further, the decisions and actions of these companies on BOTH sides of the patient-care aisle (provider and vendor) will impact the "customers" of HISTalk. It would be wise to keep in mind that these customers include those who are poised to make a decision on a vendor that will either carry them forward towards providing better healthcare or will be the anchor fastened to the rope around their neck as they try to escape the undertow from the vendor’s actions towards their employees . Remember HISTalk customers might also be; investors or other companies looking to determine if they will acquire stock or acquire the company or otherwise for a business partnership. HISTalk customers might even be current or potential employees looking to determine their career path and need an informed peek at the colour inside the walls of said company. Perhaps when it comes to negative proposals for posts, one might want to abide by the journalistic rule of validation (2 trusted sources) before any negative entries are posted. I am confident that HISTalk customers on the patient-care side as well as the vendor side would welcome candid insight into the "company behind the company". How many of us (present company included) have said,... "if only I would have known "that" before making my decision" (where "that is some important tidbit of information or collection of data that may have swayed their decision for or against a company/solution). After all, that company, or the company's solution, may well be the escort the HISTalk customers have (or will be choosing) to take to the ball.

Misys' bullying doesn't surprise me in the least. If they would spend their time ridding themselves of bad management and focusing on their growth they would be in much better shape. If you keep your employees happy, their is nothing to blog about. Keep your eye on the ball, Misys.

Someone told me that the right level of employee happiness/contentment is about 93%. If closer to 100% are happy, you're not pushing hard enough on improving as a business and won't survive. Ultimately letting down 100% of those employees. Below 93%, you should look inside and figure out what's wrong and fix it because you run the risk of letting down your customers.

Sorry, but I think that the 93% number sounds like something someone pulled out of their ass. To state that a 100% satisfaction rate within your employee ranks means that you don't "push them" enough means that you feel that employees need to be pushed to perform, and that somehow more pushing will result in more effort and profits. That's bunk. I've worked for people that think that they can push you that much further to squeeze more out of you. It degrades the worker and significantly lowers morale, but has never been proven to entice a worker to do anything more than pack up and leave. I've also worked for people that understand that incentives work better than pressure to get workers to perform. I believe you'll find much better performance out of happy workers, and you'll find that incentives work better than pressure to make a worker happy. Meantime, I'm happy! It's Friday!

I wonder whether it's hired PR guns or the managers who are claiming that banning job rants will bring back some long lost "quality" of HISTalk? Either way - definitely astroturf.

I would like to address the Babysitter analogy, though. What if the guy who employed the Babysitter assaulted her? Should she feel obliged to keep quiet for fear of never working in the town again? Should she fear being stigmatized for "badmouthing" her employer? Should she succumb to threats and intimidation to keep her quiet? Should she fear that whoever she tells will find her rant "boring"? Should she just quietly find a new job, where her next employer won't assault her, while leaving the next babysitter unwarned?

There needs to be a limit on what employers do to their employees: and once they cross the line, the employees should be ENCOURAGED to rant.

Mr. HIStalk: Aside from the obvious ($$$), what other benefits would inspire "Rockin" Rod Nichols to move his digital rolodex to RHIO-land? On the HTP website, it looks like back in Feb 2006, ex-Gov Bob Taft gave job creation tax credits to HTP. HTP mentions in Nichols press release that Ohio Medicaid is a client. So, in addition to RHIO, HTP gets incentives to get paid by Ohio Medicaid and ,per their website, help recover unreimbursed Medicaid expenses for hospitals. Sweet Science Fair Project! Taft might has well as gave his office keys to the new democratic governor.

I've heard similar numbers, so I don't think its simply a product of the poster's digestive system. I don't think the poster was implying you have to take advantage of employees to be successful in business, or that that was even remotely the goal. Just that any group of us us workerbees are going to fit a normal distribution of attributes, emotions, dispositions, etc. If everyone was actually happy, that would likely imply you're not addressing all the issues and normal problems you probably should be addressing to maintain a healthy work culture for the long term.

Oh Please. Enough with the MD Anderson abuse around their previous failed EMR efforts. 1. No one yet makes a commercial EMR for the oncology space that can handle a giant like MDA. MSK had to rely on doc scanning for years and Dana Farber/Partners only recently brought Chemo orders live 20 yrs after having developed their own CPOE. 2.The biggest EGOs there are the Docs and Researchers, brilliant as they are, naively believe they can build their own full featured EMR. Now how many places across the country have done that? 3. They started scanning charts out of necessity after failed attempts at getting to an EMR. First attempt with an early version of Millenium in 1997-8. Second with a niche oncology vendor, iKnowMed, partnered with PerSe Patient 1 for the nursing documentation. It was a long shot but did not work out when the 6 mo Chemo pilot uncovered institutional policies/proceedures that inhibited going forward. Anyone that's ever looked under the covers of the old Ulticare product (PerSe Patient1, Mysis EMR) knows it blows the doors off any contemporary product even today. Just a tale of poor marketing and sales. Maybe their largest remaining customer, NYC Health & Hospitals should just buy the rights. As for the anti-mumps/cache crowd, if it weren't for that robust and scalable database, we wouldn't even have the pitiful 15-25% hosp EMR penetration we have today. So just get over it, stop complaining and start helping your organizations be successful with whatever products they've bought. That's the realy hard work and, I think, what you are getting paid for.