HIStalk Quotes
Monday Morning Update 05/14/07
posted 05/12/2007
From Captain Oveur: "Re: Epic. The company has a new Flight Plan model with pre-built systems and Flight Teams for each module. Epic sells the Flight Plan package, then a project manager develops the plan for the Flight Team to tweak the standard product. The goal is to reduce implementation cost and pull in the consulting business from Epic's partners. It's hush hush, but six healthcare systems are signed up so far." Just a rumor until someone substantiates it, of course.
From Searching for Truth: "Re: Soarian. For those with Soarian implementation experience, what problems have you encountered and how could they have been avoided? And are they selling or not, given that one post claimed zero sales, yet another said Siemens couldn't keep up with implementation demand?" A reader suggested either Inga or I interview the Malvern people and give our read on the situation. I'm willing if they are.
From The PACS Designer: "Re: Windows. The mention of using Microsoft Windows in healthcare can raise the discussion level to intense when it comes those who are for or against such use amongst practitioners. TPD has noticed that the Windows platform is showing up in more and more software platforms. Even Apple has acknowledged the trend by allowing Windows to run on Macs, and back in the late 1990s, TPD designed the first Windows-based PACS for Cardiology! Since the move to more Windows-based applications has accelerated, you can expect to see many more vendors offering Windows based solutions coupled with a dedicated Web browser to enhance the chances for user acceptance. Oracle also has noticed this trend and has an article about it in their May/June 2007 magazine."
From Big Daddy: "Re: Very Rural CIO. Thanks for the wonderful HMS ad. You should send HMS an invoice for the free advertising. One must remember that one experience does not reflect the experience of many. HIStalk needs to be careful about becoming an advertising venue for vendors." I couldn't decide on whether to post it or not. It seemed thoughtfully written, but I'm always skeptical of all-positive reviews claiming to be from users. I would invite anyone (including Very Rural CIO, from whom verification would be nice) to submit HMS user reports under a verifiable hospital e-mail address (for my information only) and I'll run them anonymously.
From Anonymous: "Re: Greensburg, Kansas hospital. Remembering how generous your readers were for Sumter Regional Hospital, I just wanted to start the same idea for the Kansas hospital. I know you can't turn into UNICEF, but let's think about this one. It's much smaller than Sumter. I'll see what I can find out about it." I've not been able to find much of anything about Kiowa County Memorial Hospital, but KHA's news release implies that it was destroyed. Another says it partially collapsed, trapping 30 people inside before they were rescued.
Speaking of Sumter Regional, I got an update from them this week. They're hoping to open a temporary, hard-walled hospital by mid-September. They're still working with their insurance company on payment for the damaged or destroyed hospital, but it works like a car: the company writes a check to bring it back to original condition, but you decide whether to repair or replace (and Sumter hasn't decided which to do yet.) Area hospitals are sharing Sumter's nurses to keep them working, I noticed.
I have an intercepted e-mail -- apparently genuine, but I'd like verification -- claiming that an Indianapolis-area hospital is shutting down its clinical documentation implementation due to system performance problems. If you can confirm or deny, let me know. I've asked Inga to chase the story down since I have names.
Inga ran across information about a lawsuit brought against eClinicalWorks by Houston Physicians Medical Association, PLLC. The medical group claimed system performance problems forced it to stop its eCW implementation. They sought $155K for their purchase price and $500K for lost revenue. eCW countersued, it appears, the whole thing was settled in April, and the medical group has moved on to Centricity (happily, the suit claims.)
The text ads to your right are getting some decent click action, so if you want to run a short, sweet message that will reach about 13,000 HIStalk visitors a week for a ridiculously low $100, just let me know. If the page views and clicks keep increasing, I guarantee that price is going up.
A Cerner associate is named to the Kansas City Chiefs Cheer Squad (scroll down for the picture I know you want to see.) “With my particular job, there is a lot more flexibility,” Jessica said. “I’m sure as time goes on, there probably will be some conflicts, but as long as I get my stuff done, they are flexible with how that works.” Doesn't say what kind of "stuff" Jessica does there.
Vital Images announces Q1 numbers: revenue up 32%, EPS $0.14 vs. $0.10.
McKesson licenses the Anesthesia Information Management System from DocuSys. Shockingly, nothing was mentioned about calling it Horizon, although I have no doubt that's already underway.
Former McKesson sales guy Matt Marshall moves on to chemotherapy testing company Precision Therapeutics.
Judy Faulkner not only speaks at a Wisconsin conference, she gets her picture in the paper. Not quite Howard Hughes, but a Judy sighting is always newsworthy.
St. Luke's CIO John Wade says healthcare will bankrupt the country without IT adoption. His employer's flagship hospital made $38 million in profit last year, I notice. Maybe their IT spending has cut costs the point that they can't help it.
Inga mentions a Misys press release below, but I'll chime in on its title alone: "The Momentum Continues: Misys Healthcare Systems Signs More than 60 Contracts in First Quarter of 2007." Now we all know that press releases are carefully crafted marketing messages that often have little resemblance to what you might call "news," but isn't that "The Momentum Continues" part just a bit over the top? Should we readers be allowed to draw our own conclusions? I stopped reading after the headline because it was clearly company chest-puffing. Plus, it only says they signed 60 contracts, not that they got 60 new sales to new customers. It's good news, just a bad press release that they certainly don't need, given ongoing problems.
It's good to be a Googler: one of their former software engineers is a "generous philanthropist" who pledges $1 million for a new bus route.
Verizon will give its employees WebMD's personal health record. Is anyone studying anticipated vs. actual cost savings from all these modest "free PHR" projects? Shouldn't they?
Doctors are being jerks because of the implementation of electronic medical records. Sometimes they're even being shipped off to expensive residential treatment centers to calm them down. Guess you won't see that in the vendor or hospital brochures. Maybe someday the sacred cow of how medical students are selected, controlled, and trained will be addressed since that's where most of the problem originates. That's just my opinion.
A newspaper group study says the VA is exaggerating its record by comparing unrelated surveys, citing supposedly impartial studies led by VA-employed authors, and misinterpreting data.
Former Medical Manager and Hare Krishna Temple founder Mickey Singer donates $100,000 to the Alachua, FL police department for a new computer system. I don't know what happened to his fraud charges.
Several employees of Tri-City Hospital (CA) are fired after secretly taking pictures of patients and their medical records using cell phones. Five nurses, three secretaries, and two techs were canned.
Boston Business Journal names athenahealth as one of the best places to work in Massachusetts.
News, rumors, sonnets: e-mail me.
Inga's Update
Misys announces 60 new Q1 contracts. Appears the wins were across multiple product lines, including solutions for hospitals, homecare, physicians, and communities. Good to hear that it is not all doom and gloom at Misys.
HIMSS releases (warning: PDF) the results of their 2007 CIO survey. The top IT priorities over the next two years are reducing medical errors and improving patient safety (54%), upgrading inpatient clinical systems (48%), and implementing EMRs (48%). Not surprisingly, respondents cited lack of financial support as the most significant barrier to implementing technology. A sign RHIO adoption still has a ways to go: 55% of the CIOs had no plans to participate in a RHIO (or were unaware of what a RHIO is!)
InterComponentWare AG (ICW) and Agfa Healthcare announce a collaboration aimed at facilitating the sharing of patient data.
A ComputerWorld article talks about vendors using blogs to communicate marketing messages, gain feedback on offerings, etc. The writer raises a concern that vendors may come to abuse blogs and post information that is biased. Vendors wouldn’t do that, would they?
So, who would have thought Mr. HIStalk was such a huge haiku fan? He actually has them plastered with sticky notes all along his 21” flat panel monitor. Because I always I live for his admiration and praise, and, in honor of my one-month anniversary as an official HIStalk employee, I composed a haiku of my own in his honor:
HIT Blogger
He dissects truth from rumors
Always a good read
He dissects truth from rumors
Always a good read
comments (8)
1. Sleepy Horizon left...
05/13/2007 7:00 am
Re: McKesson licenses anesthesia code - 'Horizon Anesthesia' is a sure bet
as I'm sure they will want to position against their competitors (GE, Epic,
Siemens, Cerner) with no or poor solutions for that space. Maybe they
should make it a more patient focus like 'Horizon of Dreams'?
2. Anonymous left...
05/13/2007 10:10 am
Hmmm...60 new sales in 3 months for Misys is GOOD news? I think Misys has
more than 60 sales reps for all of the product lines, so that is really
less than 1 deal per quarter per sales rep. That's Momentum? I think VPs
have been let go for that kind of performance.
3. Ex-Cerner left...
05/13/2007 8:51 pm
RE: Chief's New Cheerleader... Jessica is an Inside Sales Rep in "sales
support" at Cerner, so that's why she has the time...just a 9-5 job. She
is a nice girl.
4. Anonymous left...
05/13/2007 8:56 pm
RE: Epic "Flight Plan" - Isn't this a long time coming? No offense to Judy
and staff at Epic, but other vendors have been putting this stuff into
place for over a year. Cerner for instance has what is called "Bedrock"
and the "ARC" model to do all of what Epic is planning on doing...then
again they don't rely on 3rd party consulting firms to do all the heavy
lifting of implementation. Glad to see Epic stepping up to the plate.
5. Wompa1 left...
05/14/2007 10:03 am
"one post claimed zero sales, yet another said Siemens couldn't keep up
with implementation demand?" - My guess is the "sales" refers to new sales,
not existing Siemens customers converting from Invision (of which there are
many).
6. Nainil Chheda left...
05/14/2007 12:02 pm
FYI: This HPMA case was from 2004 and since we felt eCW was not at fault we
countersued and after the facts were discussed the customer initiated
settlement in April 2007. It’s behind us and thankfully we do not have any
others to concern about.
7. PTSD left...
05/14/2007 4:25 pm
Here are arials of Greensburg, Kansas. I am sure the hospital is in one of
the pictures, just not sure which one.
http://www.kansas.com/static/slides/050507tornadoaerials/ This is on the
town's website
"After the Tornado
On May 4, 2007 at approximately 9:45pm CDT, Greensburg was almost
completely destroyed by an F5 tornado.
8. Anonymous left...
05/15/2007 11:55 am
RE: Epic Flight Plan: I don't know that I'd call it hush hush - they allude
to it on their web page.
