HIStalk Quotes
Monday Morning Update 05/01/06
posted 04/30/2006
From Anonymous: "Re: your Inside Healthcare Computing editorial. A few areas where I have different perspective perhaps - with Brailer and
you. One is 'free market' push, rather than government regulation or mandates. From where I sit (and hear) the dominant big legacy vendors have NO interest in interoperability (some aren't even "operable":-) except on the talk and committee circuit. While yakking it up in the front room, they are slowing it down or sabotaging it in the back (see EHRVA). It's FINANCIALLY to their advantage NOT to interoperate. It's like CPOE - we can wait for 100 years to get there on 'volunteerism' and lip service (with 2% increase in usage each year) or we can mandate, incentivize, or disincentivize MDs for using/not using CPOE. It's all about the bottom line, have you noted?"
SCI Solutions (I always remind that they used to be called Scheduling.com, since 99% of us still remember them only by that far more memorable name even though it's laden with unpleasant dot-com memories) is unveiling a new "corporate and product identity" at NAHAM this week, consisting of some mildly interesting product names (Order Facilitator, Schedule Maximizer, and Revenue Accelerator) and a new tagline ("Healthcare Starts with SCI") that emphasizes their access management business. I'm thinking I could be good at the branding business since I always have that eye-rolling "I could have done better than THAT" reaction to marketing stuff , but I'm sure PowerPoint-numb committees and focus groups end up neutering all the cool ideas anyway, which is why they all end up being unmemorable.
I got an e-mail from a former techie of Mobiam Solutions (previous HIStalk entries on their strange background here, here, and here, of which the first is scandalous and therefore most entertaining.) He says the company actually did develop a real, working FirstServe product in 2001-2003, but the DoD project involved a rewrite that had severe architecture problems due to incompetent company management and the lack of business analysis. Even the outdated website previously at www.mobiam.com is gone. The former CEO's name comes up as an executive for a bunch of companies but isn't listed on their current sites, so he's done some serious moving around. I don't know whether they ever delivered a product to DoD or got paid, or more importantly, how they ever got the bid in the first place.
I asked Brent James from Intermountain Health Care if he really is the early favorite to replace David Brailer as has been rumored. He says he talked to Mike Leavitt early in the formation of AHIC and that possible futures were discussed, but that he hasn't heard from anyone since Brailer's resignation was announced, summarizing that "In other words, I am just as clueless as most anyone else." Now if he hypothetically has been approached even informally, it would most certainly be under the strict condition that he not blab that fact (particularly to irresponsible anonymous bloggers,) and even if approached, technically could say it wasn't since Brailer's announcement since insiders knew it was coming and the discussion could have been before then, but I'll take him at face value since he was nice enough to tell me. In the mean time, I put up a new poll to your right asking from where the new Coordinator should be chosen.
Cerner gets mentioned in Fortune for hitting $1 billion in sales for the first time last year and for enlisting customers to man (woman? person?) their HIMSS booths. "Perhaps the ultimate expression of marquee customer leverage was on display in February at a health-care-technology trade show in San Diego. The company enlisted more than 20 hospital administrators and clinicians to man its booth and explain the benefits of using Cerner software. This was basically a volunteer effort: Cerner covered their travel costs and threw in a token gift bag."
In other mildly Cerner-related news, the Kansas City Police Department's hires its third paid lobbyist, who also lobbies for Cerner. You might question why a city government department needs a team of lobbyists, that is unless you are knowledgable of how politics works, in which case (like this one) you'd find the usual mutual back room back scratching at taxpayer expense. Bet Neal can get his tickets fixed.
Finally, iSoft issues a rather obvious but previously unacknowledged profit warning, claiming its NHS troubles are not responsible. Misys takeover rumors persist, especially since Misys has said previously that it is looking for healthcare IT acquisitions. "Analysts at Investec this month said the company’s apparent practice of making loans to itself could hurt cashflow. 'The company has effectively received cash up front for work that it has committed to do in the future,' said Investec. Also of concern was the decline in the amount of money the company had on hand to cover unexpected costs or customers’ defaulting on payments. The latest profit warning prompted further speculation that Isoft could soon be consumed by another company." Shares are down 70% so far this year, although the founders made a fortune after making rosy financial predictions just after the NHS deal was announced and selling their own shares immediately afterward.
I'll correct my "What non-profit hospital CIO makes the most money" entry. Paying more than Kettering: UPMC, with a CIO salary of $635,744. They are quite generous in Pittsburgh, as outlined here. Even their HR guy makes $500K, which would make his salary about 10 times what I'd say the best HR people are worth. If you've ever tried to hire hospital staff through HR or be hired yourself, you know what I'm talking about.
Children's Cincinnati sells another technology it developed to a vendor, this time licensing its RadStream radiology workflow system to AMICAS. It will ba available as a standalone product later this year and then integrated into Vision PACS.
Siemens will pay nearly $2 billion to buy Diagnostic Products Corporation, which sells immunodiagnostic testing equipment and services.
An Arizona newspaper runs a nice piece on the paperless clinical system at 172-bed Banner Estrella Medical Center, which if I recall correctly is a Cerner site.
The UK military will spend $150 million on a battlefield EMR, with core capability provided by existing supplier Emis.
LA's St. Vincent Medical Center is served with a federal criminal subpoena for shady dealings in its closed liver transplant program. The hospital is struggling financially as well, laying off 8% of its workforce last week.
Indiana's Medical Informatics Engineering, the subject of an FBI investigation for allegedly tampering with the software of a competitor, files suit against that company (triPRACTIX) and a former MIE customer Orthopaedics Northeast. That group's former IT department started triPRACTIX, whose product replaced MIE's at their previous employer. MIE has no mention of any of the above in the "News" section of their site.
I read every e-mail. Or, if you know something interesting that I don't (as every HIStalk reader does) share it with me by using the Rumor Report form to your right.
comments (2)
1. neil@medhealthaccess.com left...
04/30/2006 10:17 am
Quicken for Healthcare via United, Intuit, Ingenix et al is interesting for
more than a few reasons. Maybe your BLOG can spur some useful fodder on
this one -- JNF
