Although I agree that medical errors occur frequently, I don’t think we should brush it off, but should attack the root cause of the errors so the next time they don’t occurr.

We also need to support the staff with systems that alert them to errors – before they occur, especially nursing, who don’t have a double check to fall back on. I agree with yesterdays editorial – Now that it’s the new year – lets get cracking on bedside medication verification! – add to that smart pumps.

I was part of a deal where we received a PO slightly in excess of 15 mil. This deal was the culmination of 5 years of hard work on the account… where 50,000 users was considered the PILOT of the project.
There were 7 reps and tech-reps involved that were commissionable, at various levels (alas, I was very low down on that scale)… however due to the size and nature of the purchase, the company did not want to pay out commissions based on the rates that were in our comp-plans. We ended up having to seek legal counsel, and were within a day of submitting a lawsuit _against_the_company_that_we_worked_for_, when they agreed to pay out based on the comp plans in effect at the time of the sale. This happened over a year after the sale closed, and the commissions were originally due to be paid. They didn’t pay interest on our monies that they held for that year, nor did we recoup our legal expenses.

The comp-plan that followed the fiscal year in which the atypical sale was attained ended up having 10 or so pages of addendii, caveats, appendices…

So it’s not always rosy being a salesperson out there on the sharp end; I believe it causes a CFO physical pain every time that he or she has to authorize commission payments, and that’s why they so rarely do it…

SoftwareSalesguy 1972