HIStalk Quotes
News 07/06/06
posted 07/05/2006
From Dogofwar: "Re: Epic cult. After attending the Epic User Group Meeting in Madison a couple of years ago, I saw that Epic really does have an unusual culture. Everyone wore superhero outfits, even Judy (yikes!) If my employer told me, 'You're going to be wearing this Batman costume, I wouldn't be long for the place. The User Group was also oddly dry. Perhaps it was the fact that 80% of the employees seemed to be fresh out of college (and bussed around in school buses, no less), but I needed a drink after a full day of superheroes + Madison + HIT. Another characteristic of many Epic employees is that they've only ever worked for Epic."
From Shooter: "I have it from good sources that BT and GE have signed an Interim Letter of Intent to terminate their agreement. They have finalised all but the last details of the termination agreement - the outstanding parts relating to the details about the handoff of QMS and some confidentiality stuff. The two companies are looking to make a complete break with GE exiting the UK market and most of its UK staff being made redundant. The last details should be finalised by Wednesday with announcements and letters to all the Trusts going out Thursday/Friday." I guess that's the last desecration of the sorry IDX corpse. Thanks for the report. Update: it was just announced that GE gets the regional boot, to be replaced by Cerner. "The swap is possibly the lesser of two evils, but it will cause more delays and there is no evidence that Cerner’s delivery will be much better ... How is Cerner going to resource a whole other area as well?"
I flew my flag proudly all weekend (still am, in fact) but the televised Independence Day TV specials were awful. 1812 Overture? Not any more. Symphonies in both Nashville and Washington played only the short finale, going right to the cannons and fireworks, dumbing down patriotic music to the level of those TV commercials that use only the catchy parts of a five-minute hit song, replaying the same 10 seconds' worth to make sure you recognize their investment. Sousa marches were also in short supply, their time taken up by Stevie Wonder, Ronnie Milsap, Jason Alexander, and other boring entertainers whose background and music had nothing to do with anything. Oh, and from New York, crowds got to watch Liza Minnelli lip-synch New York, New York poorly. I bet classically trained musicians hate having to play this crap for Joe Sixpack crowds present only to see stuff explode.
Listening to now: Nine Black Alps, a ripping frenzy of stage-leaping rock and roll. Also, Red Guitar, somewhere between mellow and jangling, maybe a little bit reminiscent of CSN.
MD NetGuide asked me for quotes regarding David Brailer's resignation awhile back. I completely forgot about it until I vanity-searched the web to see if anyone was talking about me and ran across their site. They asked three questions about ONCHIT obstacles, accomplishments, and effectiveness, which, being a pompous blowhard, I was happy to answer. They must have a hip web designer: if you look at the page source, the two meta tags (which come up as the page title when searching) are "dude" and "does this work."
Acacia Research announces new licensing deals from vendors who would rather pay them extortion money than risk idiotic lawsuit awards by fighting their questionable patent infringement claims. Cerner, McKesson, and GE will pay Acacia for the privilege of selling software that schedules healthcare resources, while HP antes up go-away money for "licensing" Acacia's "proprietary" laptop docking station patent. Acacia also announced that it has licensed GPS navigation software from tiny companies no one has ever heard of, no doubt allowing them to send the legal arm-twisters after Garmin and others. Godspeed to Epic, who refused to cave in and is taking them to court.
Texas's JPS Health Network will pay $135K to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by its former police chief, who says he was fired because he refused to fix traffic tickets for the system's executives.
SunGard, the business continuity company that has a lesser-known financial software division, appears to be making a run to acquire Misys, along with current and former Misys management, who want to take Misys private. All the interest seems to be in their larger financial business, so it's a good bet that the healthcare line would be sold off by any of the above to return part of their investment quickly.
I get occasional e-mails from people fascinated with UPMC's IT operation, whose massive spending seems never to pay off. The latest rumor: that their big IBM hardware deal was a smokescreen for throwing grid computing at Millennium to improve its performance. If you can anonymously confirm or deny, or give a general update on their once-splashy, now-quiet Millennium implementation, let me know. There must be a ton of consultants out there who rotated through UPMC given what they spent on them, some of whom hopefully read HIStalk.
Shares of Merge Healthcare dropped 40% Monday on news of the resignations of its CEO, CFO, and another VP, likely related to announcements that financials going back to 2002 will have to be restated due to improper revenue recognition. The company drops off NASDAQ and onto the Pink Sheets next Monday unless the exchange gives them yet another reprieve for overdue financial reports (about as likely as Neal Patterson's quitting Cerner to become a Trappist monk.) The company held a grim conference call today, with little to say other than the obvious. Delisted companies have a tough time raising capital, possibly making Merge attractive to a company looking to bottom-fish. The stock's down nearly 75% since mid-February.
A British anesthesiologist who lost his job in 2004 after criticizing NPfIT in a letter to the NHS chief executive right after the contracts were awarded now says he was fired for speaking up to then-CEO Nigel Crisp. The former physician advisory group chair complained about the lack of clinical input into the system selection: "I remain concerned that the current arrangements within the programme are unsafe from a variety of angles and, in particular, that the constraints of the contracting process, with its absence of clinical input, may have resulted in the purchase of a product that will potentially not fulfil our goals.”
News, rumors, whatever: e-mail me or use the Rumor Report to your right.
comments (5)
1. Anony-mouse left...
07/06/2006 3:11 pm
Re: SunGard - they have been in healthcare before when they purchased a
product from Intelus. They owned an imaging product that was sold-off to
E-crap-shoot (ECLP). SunGard didn't have enough of the punishment and also
bought Macess, a pretty slick scanning/document management workflow product
for managed care organizations. I saw the latter working well for a number
of organizations in the early 90's/
2. Anony-mouse left...
07/06/2006 3:12 pm
I think Merge and Emdeon need to merge. Hey Charlie (McCall), want to get
the band back together and create the next Enron.
3. Epic_Escapee left...
07/07/2006 10:20 am
It's Epic policy that all company functions are dry. It is true that
Epic has a ton of fresh college grads as employees. Looking back at it (I
was fresh from college when I started at Epic), it really was a great place
to start from. The work ethic you develop there is crazy. Epic is a
"great place to be from".
4. madisonian272 left...
07/07/2006 11:42 pm
RE: Epic cult. For what it's worth, the Epic employees who dress up in
keeping with the theme do so voluntarily. There are some loyal company
employees who are willing to show their devotion in kooky ways (and some
who just like having Halloween a bit early).
