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June 19, 2007 News 5 Comments

Wednesday morning update: Misys just announced results. I’ve posted details in the discussion forum. 

From Duuude: “Re: HIMSS Summit announcement listing the accomplishments of keynote speaker Michael Murphy, Sharp Healthcare CEO and winner of the CEO IT Achievement Award. Shouldn’t it also say, ‘ … and kicked IDX out due to poor product interoperability’ as an accomplishment?” Not by HIMSS, but the rest of us can feel free to do so.

From Lefty’s Lament in PA: “Re: Verus data breach. Rumor has it that Verus, Inc., vendor of on-line bill payment and Emdeon partner, has e-mailed its customers to tell them they are closing their doors due to insolvency. Apparently, investors fell through?”

From Irritated in Iowa: “Re: Allscripts. We recently went on a site visit for Allscripts Healthmatics ED to North Fulton Hospital in Atlanta and we were under the assumption that the ED medical director there was leading the site visit. He was actually an Allscripts employee who left the hospital several months ago! This seems very deceptive – no wonder we don’t like people in sales!” I omitted his name, but checked it out: he used to be North Fulton’s ED director and still has staff privileges there. He’s also consulting with Allscripts. No problem there as long as he wasn’t passed off as still being in charge during your visit, although some clarity about his role would have been appropriate. He’s still listed on some Allscripts material as being the hospital’s ED director, but that could just be outdated information or referencing the position he held during the implementation he talks about. Thoughts?

From Benny Hill: “Re: interviews. I really enjoyed the NYU and Allina interviews. They provided insight into what is often times the misrepresented world of implementations and go-lives (misrepresented by the vendor trying to see you what you have to implement). Any Cerner or Siemens Soarian clients stepping up to the plate? I think a Cerner client would have an interesting story. It would be even better if you could interview a CIO from ”across the pond’ on how their Cerner implementation fared.” Thanks! Inga and I enjoyed doing those interviews, too. If you’re a hospital CIO, we’d be happy to interview you (we’ll tag you as anonymous if you insist, although we’d rather not.) You may not think you have anything interesting to share, but we can always turn up fun stuff to talk about (and make you semi-famous in the process.) Since Benny wants to hear from Cerner and Soarian shops, we’ll give you high priority. E-mail me. We promise to make it fun.

From Ilich Ramaraz Sanchez: “Re: FCG. why is it a surprise that they might go after some old employees? Consulting vendors and HIS vendors have done so for years. If you have signed a non-compete and then take a list of current and former company employees and start contacting them, why wouldn’t they go after you? They have sent cease-and-desist letters – it’s nothing new. Some former employees have been pretty blatant in their new businesses. Competing against your former boss utilizing their former employees takes serious cojones. Yet, at the same time, one wonders perhaps FCG does not want to make waves, considering they have people lurking in the shadows of their own hallowed halls waiting out their non-compete from rival companies.”

From The PACS Designer: “Re: Azyxxi. Dr. Bill Crounse’s HealthBlog site has a new post on Azyxxi. Since it has been awhile since there have been any discussions on the subject, it now looks like activity is picking up with the announcement that Johns Hopkins has jumped the the Azyxxi bandwagon. For those that are interested, the site has an audiocast with the key players comments on why they chose Azyxxi.” I was supposed to see it awhile back, but that never panned out. I haven’t heard much lately, either, although I’m sure work is being done to bring it up to Microsoft’s standards.

From Russell Casse: “Re: Healthvision. Major layoffs at Healthvision appear to be happening today (20-40 total). That leaves just three people on the executive staff. Verisign is not giving them any more cash and VHA seems to have all but disowned them, as they sent a memo to their members stating that they are no longer affiliated with HV.” Confirmed: restructuring occurred today on the low end of your range. I’ve redacted the names you mentioned since I sure wouldn’t want mine put up on some idiot’s blog after I’d already suffered the indignity of losing my job. Nobody likes layoffs, but it’s a fact of life, unfortunately, even though both employees and management are doing the best they can. Otherwise, life goes on: the company still has customers and work to be done. Condolences to those affected (and to those who had to orchestrate the unpleasantness.) There are plenty of jobs out there for the displaced. Some of the sponsors whose ads are to your left would love to talk to you, I bet.

Reader Matt wrote this response to a New York Times article called Who Pays for Efficiency? “In Steve Lohr’s examination of the costs and benefits of electronic health records (‘Who Pays For Efficiency’, June 11, 2007), he addresses physicians and payers, but he is missing the most important stakeholder – the patient. While insurance carriers may bear the greatest financial benefit from the use of electronic health records, patients experience safer care and improved outcomes – all of which help to defray overall healthcare costs. When combined with recent efforts in healthcare information exchange and the ability for physicians to see a patient’s record along the continuum of care – all enabled by electronic health records – the benefits to patients extend beyond the physician’s office to other venues of care including the hospital and most importantly to the emergency room where quick access to a patient’s medical history is critical in providing timely and accurate care.”

Misys will provide a trading update Wednesday that should tell us how healthcare is doing.

Healthcare companies on this year’s Computerworld’s 100 Best Places to Work in IT: Sharp HealthCare (#3), VHA Inc. (#16), Sutter Health (#18), Norton Healthcare (#34), Partners (#37), Memorial Long Beach (#42), Cerner (#59), Palmetto Health (#62), Moffitt (#68), Englewood Hospital (#94), and Duke University Health System (#100).

Fred Trotter has posted a guide to sharing medical software via FOSS licensing.

eScription recognizes its customers who have saved big money through the use of its products. Lots of familiar names are on the list: Carle Clinic, Charleston Area Medical Center, BIDMC, Brigham and Women’s, and UNC Health Care (those are the ones I know very well.) One winner said they’d chopped transcription turnaround time from two weeks to 24 hours. Speaking of eScription, the Columbus paper mentions that a local hospital improved transcriptionist productivity so much that it’s doing outside work for doctors. Said one of its customers: ‘When Mid-Ohio Surgical Associates signed up with Mount Carmel as a customer for the service, the company was told that turnaround time would be 24 hours, said David Hafler, administrator for the practice. ‘We were like, we’ll believe it when we see it,’ Hafler said. ‘Well, we see it.'”

Sumter Hospital update: they’ll move to the interim hospital just over three months from now. The oncology clinic has seen its 1,000th patient since its relocation. Some NFL players helped out with a charity golf tournament – the winning team from Depot Car Wash donated its winnings back to the hospital. They held a silent auction and black tie dinner this week, raising $16,000 from the auction alone. Pictures of Sumter Regional East are here.

Housekeeping issues:

To your right (on HIStalk2 only) is a new “Subscribe to Updates” box. That gets you on the “new” e-mail update list. The old one may go away eventually, so I suggest signing up (the new one is more powerful, so that’s why the change.)

I’ve heard from a few readers that IE7 is giving errors when displaying this page. It’s apparently common because of the way the sponsor ads are formatted, but it gives no errors in Firefox and only minor errors in earlier IE versions. If you’re having to click OK a bunch of times, you can turn off script error checking and debugging in IE (or download Firefox.)

I added a link to HIStalk Discussion at the top of the page (Inga’s good idea.) Also, notice that if you hover your cursor over the discussion topics to your right, you can read the first part of each item without clicking (I just discovered that.)

Why post to HIStalk Discussion instead of leaving a comment? Better formatting, automatic quoting, polling, your title shows up on the main HIStalk page, and you can easily include links. Best of all, you don’t have to wait for me to approve your message – since you’re registered, your message comes up immediately.

Today is HIStalk’s fourth birthday, an obnoxious little hellraising toddler with the sweetest face you can imagine when it’s asleep.

As Inga reported on the discussion board, Misys Healthcare names Gary Larson to run its homecare division. He was CEO of a Kodak subsidiary.

Here’s another excuse for physicians to keep paper-based records: a law journal says EMRs raise malpractice liability risks. Reasons: data loss, inappropriate corrections, inaccurate entries, unauthorized access, and problems when transitioning from paper. All sound like advantages of EMRs over paper to me, but I’m not a smart lawyer. One reason that does make sense (rightly or not): EMRs provide a permanent record of overridden clinical warnings that could be used as evidence. I know I’ve had to cough up electronic evidence of such warnings and responses in the past, but I don’t know if it ended up being important to the case.

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin writes a good newspaper piece on EMRs.

News, rumors, e-mail me.

Discuss today’s HIStalk.


Inga’s Update

Last week I mentioned that Mark Anderson and the AC Group just released the 2007 PMS and EHR Vendor Functionality and Company Rating Report. For those not familiar with The Healthcare IT Futurist Mark Anderson, he is CEO of the AC Group, which publishes rankings of PMS/EMR/EHR products. The evaluation is based on surveys with several hundred questions on product functionality. Unlike some other rankings (such as KLAS,) the emphasis with the AC Group rankings is functionality, though client satisfaction and company viability do come into play to some (unclear) degree.

For grins, I cross-referenced the KLAS rankings with the AC Group rankings and determined that strong functionality does not always equal client satisfaction (assuming that KLAS rankings really do represent client satisfaction – and I am not going to address that already well-addressed topic here.) Not all the products were assessed by both rankings, by the way.

The takeaway, I guess, is that if you are looking for an EMR solution, best not to depend too heavily on just one set of rankings.(Which brings up another topic … do you think there is a need for some sort of on-line vendor guide that compiles various rankings and commentary from users – such as HIStalk readers?)

Anyway, back to the AC Group. Here are a few takeaways from the rankings.

Who is hot

NextGen stands in a league of its own, with top ranking in all the categories in which it was ranked (which was everything except for 1-2 doctor solutions and “charting systems”- in other words, EMRs that were not considered full-fledged EMRs.) Note that in the KLAS rankings as of the end of 2006, NextGen ranked 12th for 1-5 doctors and 6th for 6-25 and 25+ docs.

The also-hots

Allscripts, with strong functionality rankings for both TouchWorks and HealthMatics. The HealthMatics products were ranked between 3 and 8 in various categories; TouchWorks 2nd and 6th. Predictably, HealthMatics was higher ranked for solutions for fewer physicians and TouchWorks did better in the large solution categories. There was some similarity in KLAS and the AC rankings for the Allscripts solutions. TouchWorks was ranked 2nd in the KLAS 25+ category. HealthMatics was ranked 6th for 1-5 doctors and 3rd for 6-25 doctors in KLAS.

eClinicalWorks had solid rankings and good KLAS numbers. Others with relatively strong functionality ratings included Streamline MD, MCS- Medical Communication Systems, and McKesson Practice Partner. Streamline and MCS were not ranked by KLAS; Practice Partner had average KLAS scores.

Middle of the pack

Others with solid though not outstanding rankings included Omni-MD, Bond Technologies, Misys, Greenway, GE Healthcare, and Epic (although Epic was #3 for FQHC and >100 doctor solutions).

Charting systems

The top charting systems included MediNotes, SynaMed, Medinformatix, Cerner, and SSIMED. Again, charting systems are considered to be those EMRs that are not full-featured EMR’s.

I am curious what others think about the value of these rankings, so please share!

I have enjoyed talking to a few of our sponsors over the last couple weeks. If they did a KLAS ranking for sponsor satisfaction, I think HIStalk would be Best in KLAS. Take note, all you potential benefactors who are considering joining the coolest sponsorship group out there … our sponsors love us because they get great exposure, personal attention from Mr. H (and me),  and the rates are a lot less than many, many other options out there! And Platinum sponsors have the opportunity for a personal interview by Mr. HIStalk to introduce you to our big audience (come on, you know you have always wanted to talk to him!) Let me know if you want to hear more.

Speaking of sponsors and KLAS, congrats to Hayes Management Consulting for their #1 KLAS rankings in the categories of Planning & Assessment and Implementation Supportive. Hayes was also ranked second in Technical Consulting and Overall Professional Services in KLAS’ Mid-Year Top 20 Report.

Also, kudos to sponsor InterSystems for Ensemble’s #1 ranking in Other General Market Software and Interface Engines.

A round of applause for sponsor eScription for EditScript’s top honors in Transcription and Back-End Speech Recognition.

Anyone care to comment on the recent KLAS rankings?



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Currently there are "5 comments" on this Article:

  1. Maybe HealthVision would be doing better if they sponsored HISTalk? Could it be the first example of “Death by Not Sponsoring”? I say death because rumor has it that one of their biggest customers will soon be no more (ELAY).

  2. Inga-

    You didn’t mention that athenahealth continues to dominate on the PMIS front taking top honors in the 6-25 and 26-100 categories – by a healthy margin.

    While the EMR space is hot, more and more survey data is coming out that groups/practices are looking to replace their PMIS systems – especially when you look at legacy players like Misys or Emdeon/WebMD/Sage or whatever they are calling themselves now falling behind. There aren’t many companies that are coming to market with solid EMR and PIMIS offerings. In fact, I hear stories of groups implementing some of the “leading” EMRs and their PMs are so bad they have backed out of implementing – the market does not want to see this happen.

    Vendors should really be paying more attention to this market as adoption rates are still very low in the ambulatory space. Addressing the business needs/operations of a practice gets them in a situation where making a clinical solution purchase more viable.

  3. Actually my posting was focused on the AC Group’s report, which actually makes no mention of athenahealth.

    However, to your point, I agree that practices are and will continue to evaluate and upgrade older legacy systems. However, my opinion is that most of the time practices will continue selecting EMR first with the PM secondary. Why? The doctors are the one paying for the systems, they are the ones using the EMR, and they have to be happy with the choice.

    Ultimately vendors that will be the winners are those that have solid PM AND EMR’s. Assuming athenahealth’s new EMR is as strong as their PM, I would expect to see them on reports like the AC Group’s in the future.

  4. Mr. HISTalk should reach out to Scott Decker for the full story at HEALTHvision. I know first hand there are a lot of rumors about what is really happening. Yes – there were layoffs. A VERY lean executive team now leads HV and the remaining employees are part of a shift in focus, not a shift in direction or strategy. I know Scott personally — he’ll talk to you again.







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