News 9/7/07

From The PACS Designer: “Re: native DICOM. TSS makes a valid point about the use of private attributes. I’m not sure if the HIStalk community knows that the DICOM Workgroups are expanding into modalities that were not previously DICOM-enabled, such as Pathology Workgroup 26. As more modalities join the DICOM community, it becomes vitally important that we all operate from a common DICOM platform. Why shouldn’t it be native DICOM? Wouldn’t it be better for all of us to work as a team in the native DICOM community?”

From Dale Cooper: “Re: Dairyland. Now that Mediware has a new CEO (revolving door?), looks like Mr Burgess is going to help Vista capital try to get DHS in gear. IMHO – wrong guy, wrong time, wrong place … good luck.” Former Mediware CEO (until September 24, actually, but he’s taking the Mediware job now) James Burgess was just named CEO of Dairyland Healthcare Solutions a few minutes ago (6:17 PM Eastern). Actually, Dairyland is owned by Francisco Partners, but the confusion with Vista Equity is understandable since Vista has investments in SIS and the former Sunquest. Francisco also owned LYNX Medical Systems, but sold it to Picis in July.

Guess the Company, brought to you by Ex-(Company) and redacted to keep me out of trouble: “(Executive) is a pompous ass. He is the most arrogant person I have ever worked directly for. He has vision for this industry, but has a leadership style of complete dictatorship and surrounds himself with the politically focused. The ability to execute sucks. (Executive) thinks it’s services, it has always been his half-assed development team who consistently delivers terrible code. I feel sorry for anybody still there.” The funny thing is that when I run stuff like this, several folks always guess it’s their own company, so it’s not always as obvious as you might think.

Guess the Company II: some former employees of (company) are having a reunion and somebody sent over a picture of the tee shirts they’ll be wearing. They say: “Can’t build it? Have old technology? Tired of trying to convince people that you have a great personality?” There’s also a picture of a dead animal that I won’t name. I bet they’ll be carousing and trading war stories.

From Larry: “Re: Greenway. You mentioned that you were impressed by Greenway’s recent press release. I was wondering if you or any of your readers had any comments regarding the huge capital investments Greenway has received since inception ($80-$100 million, it seems). Is their EMR product and sales performance impressive given what they’ve had to work with?” I’ll defer to those who know more about it than I do.

From Leland Palmer: “Re: Bronx Lebanon. Any update on who’s winning the battle of the Bronx between Cerner and Eclipsys?” Readers?

Special thanks to Sentillion, EnovateIT, Pring|Pierce, and SCI Solutions. Inga and I decided to offer small text ads in our Brev+IT weekly newsletter to support some expansion we’ve got in mind for it. We offered four spots to current sponsors for terms up to one year. Within within 24 hours, these Platinum sponsors had signed on for the full year (we even had to turn a couple of others away). You can’t imagine how energizing it is to have that kind of support. We know these folks and they’re doing it for one reason: they like what we do and they respect HIStalk’s readers. We appreciate that very much and will soon have some new stuff to talk about as a result. Sign up and you’ll know the Top 5 stories each week, like last week’s: (5) Cerner in the UK, (4) Indian BPO acquisitions, (3) MedAssets IPO, (2) FDA’s access to DoD patient information, and the biggest story of the week, (1) … well, let’s keep at least one secret between just us 721 subscribers.

Thanks, too, to recently renewing HIStalk annual sponsors R. Gaines Baty Associates, Healthcare Growth Partners, Picis, Hayes Management Consulting, SolCom, and Novo Innovations. I’m a little old to be saying “you rock”, but you know you do.

Shortwave Coates and others were right several weeks ago with their rumor reports that Ingenix would acquire Healthia Consulting. It was announced yesterday. “We want to share with you today some exciting news – Healthia is going to become a part of Ingenix, a leading health information technology company. Since our inception, we’ve aimed solely at staying on the leading-edge of health care consulting, and as a result we have become nationally known and recognized for the services we’ve provided to the industry. With increasing levels of opportunity nationally, we sought capabilities that better serve our customers and provide challenging opportunities for our colleagues. Becoming part of the Ingenix family of companies does just that – retains our exclusive focus on health care while giving us broader and enhanced capabilities.” Ingenix bought Claredi and Lewin Group recently as well and was rumored here to be acquiring LighthouseMD, although I haven’t confirmed that so far. I was going to list their products and services, but it’s so long it’s arranged alphabetically like a telephone book. They are definitely growing. They got a gem with Healthia, so hopefully they won’t change it much.

Athenahealth’s $14-$16 IPO price will raise around $68 million or up to $115 million, depending on which reports you read, valuing the company at up to $550 million.Cerner is sponsoring and participating in a conference in Dubai. They’re also webcasting investor presentations live Friday morning and Tuesday afternoon.

Ray Moss is named VP/CIO of Valley Presbyterian Hospital (CA), leaving Perot’s Cedars-Sinai tech services group.

Keane gets a $1 million contract to install parts of InSight at Capital Health System (NJ).

CompuGroup’s CEO does an interview with eHealth Europe. On the company’s failed iSoft bid: “Everybody knows iSoft does have problems, both financially and with its products, and these kind of problems do not become less over time. Further more in our view it became more unrealistic to receive the voting power to implement our restructuring plans in time. The whole deal became too risky for my taste and doesn’t agree with my understanding of shareholder value.” He says CompuGroup is still looking for healthcare IT software companies to acquire.Good article: 10 signs that you’re not cut out to be an IT manager.

TeraMedica will distribute its “single patient snapshot” Evercore imaging software in the Asia Pacific, integrating with Healthinc‘s RIS.

Interesting: the 2003 law that limited the workweek of medical residents to 80 hours has had no impact (good or bad) on Medicare patient mortality.

Formedic is offering a free Medical History Questionnaire patient interview application to physician offices. There’s a recorded demo there. I’m not sure I’d lead off warning the patient to enter their “chief complaint” and not their “symptoms” (are patients supposed to know the difference?), but once you get past that screen, it gets better. Nothing tells you who the company is, the domain registration has privacy block on, and the only contact is an online form and 800 number, but the press release points to the main Formedic site.

Worldwide corruption investigations into Siemens may be heading here. The SEC has requested files from German authorities who are going after Siemens for up to a reported $1.4 billion in bribery and anti-trust violations. Just announced: China is looking into possible corruption involving the purchase of Siemens medical equipment there. If an investigation opens up here, you can bet their competitors will be subpoenaing everyone within 20 miles of hospitals where Siemens got the contract. I know would.

Hopkins gets its stolen laptop back with the medical records of several thousand cancer patients intact. Odd: a lawyer knew who had it, called the local newspaper to announce that he’d get it back, and turned the occasion into an opportunity to pitch his law office’s expansion into identify theft cases.

No question: the best vendor for getting good press is diagnosis software vendor Isabel. Nice product and it’s just stunning how well they get articles about it into the mainstream press. It’s in USA Today, which not only misquoted the price as $750 instead of $50,000 per year, but also said it was “highly rated” by HIMSS, which despite many ways of cozying up to vendors, doesn’t evaluate them as far as I know. HIStalk reader Gary Kantor, MD of Case Western was kind enough to review Isabel for HIStalk last year.

The Providence Health System IT employee whose car was burglarized in his driveway in late 2005, resulting in loss of patient data tapes, is suing the health system for $1 million. He says he was fired because he called the police, not for breaking policy.

RemedyMD has integrated medication dosing algorithms from Dimensional Dosing Systems into its electronic medical records software.

Mediware announces Q4 numbers: revenue up 14%, EPS $0.06 vs. $0.07. The company was crowing about its medication reconciliation product just a couple of weeks ago, but the earnings announcement says medication management product sales were slower than anticipated (that includes the eMar and WORx products, though).

A UK health department consolidates its application databases using InterSystems Ensemble.

E-mail me. But only if you want to.

Inga’s Update

Cerner has announced the keynotes for their upcoming health conference. The “star-studded line-up” includes John Kerry and Richard Teerlink (former Harley-Davidson chairman). Will you Cerner users rush to send in your registration now that you have the chance to hear these guys? – or are vendors better off not spending all that money for speakers that know next to nothing about the products you are using?

Last month I had noted that Allscripts had been announcing a number of big wins and wondered if sales were up suddenly up or if their PR machine was working overtime. A reader suggested it was the latter. However, yesterday they announced their largest EHR contract ever with the Columbia University Medical Center. Columbia will be implementing the system in their outpatient physician group and their future community-based IPA. Fortune magazine seems to agree with me, as well as they just named Allscripts #23 on their list of the 100 Fastest-Growing Companies for posting growth numbers as follows: EPS up 138%, revenue up 38%, and total return 48% (bummer that I don’t own any of their stock). In looking over the Fortune list, I didn’t notice any other HIT companies, by the way.

Check in with the fetching Inga.