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News 6/27/08

June 26, 2008 News 2 Comments

From Home Alone: "Re: Misys Homecare. What can anyone tell me about it? Will they run this into the ground much like the old Sunquest?"

From Jerry Rivers: "Re: job helper. I saw your ad that says 75% of HIStalk readers say it helps their job. I don’t believe it." The ad banner you mentioned is running on HealthcareITJobs.com and it refers to this exact question from the spring HIStalk Reader Survey: "Over the past year, HIStalk helped me perform my job better." 228 respondents answered, with 172 (75.4%) saying True and 56 (24.6%) said False. Hey, just because we make it entertaining doesn’t mean our information isn’t useful. Lots of folks are looking for competitive advantage out there and we try to give it.

From Tom Terrific: "Re: WellPoint. I’ve heard it mentioned in two separate areas that Wellpoint is rolling out EMRS to physicians. Do you know anything about this?" They did e-prescribing quite a while ago and were keeping some sort of PHR, but I hadn’t heard of new physician projects. If you know, tell me.

From Boba Fett: "Re: NextGen. Scott Decker to be named CEO of NextGen. Patrick Cline getting kick upstairs to head QSI." Unconfirmed and probably can’t be since QSII is publicly traded. But, Scott’s a reader (I interviewed him when he was with Healthvision) so you never know. Perhaps presciently, he mentioned Pat Cline then. Quality Systems CEO Lou Silverman announced Tuesday that he will resign effective August 16.

From E. Buzz Miller: "Re: Emageon. Perkins is out." An SEC document says COO and onetime heir apparent Chris Perkins has resigned, effective July 25, following all the proxy fight stuff with Oliver Press Partners.

A reader commented on my Odd Lawsuit from Tuesday that involved age discrimination, interpreting my remarks as defending the hospital where the 69-year-old employee with 42 years on the job was allegedly fired by her supervisor after a barrage of "old lady" comments. My usually full-bore sarcasm must have been masked since I’m all the way behind the lady who got canned, provided she’s telling the truth, of course. I’d much rather see the apparently obnoxious supervisor get nailed instead of the hospital, but that’s not how it works with age discrimination.

Listening: Beatnik Termites (reader recommendation). Infectiously fun summer, doo-woppyish surf-pop-punk. I was totally hooked in the first 15 seconds of Somebody Else’s Baby. Five stars. I’ve played everything on their MySpace page about a dozen times.

Royal United Hospital Bath delays its planned Millennium go-live in the UK, worried about Fujitsu’s interest in finishing the implementation now that the company is backing out of its NHS contracts.

New CIOs: Pardee Hospital (NC) names Harold Moore, formerly of Piedmont Healthcare Management Group. UPMC Magee-Women’s Hospital (PA) announces the promotion of Lou Baverso to CIO, replacing Bruce Haviland who has moved to UPMC Mercy. Antoine Agassi, chair of Tennessee’s eHealth Advisory Council, takes the CIO slot of hospitalist provider Cogent Healthcare of Nashville.

Jobs: Cerner Clinical Consultants, Epic Clarity Consultants, C++ Developer.

Sure to raise some eyebrows, including those of the FDA: an article in the new JAMA shows that RFID devices interfere significantly and sometimes hazardously with nearby ICU medical equipment. Especially prone devices: infusion pumps, with 8 of 9 models (five B. Braun and two Alaris) having problems ranging from false alarms to failure. Pacemakers were problematic, too, with erroneous pulsing, and ventilators also acted up. You will no doubt here conflicting interpretations, with RFID locating vendors claiming the study was a European lab experiment with minimal real-world applicability, while competitors whose systems use infrared and sonic waves (or maybe even barcodes) will point out that RFID was designed for warehouse pallets, not deploying to rooms full of life-sustaining medical equipment, and has the exact qualities you might expect to interfere with sensitive gear. Thanks to the reader who sent the full text article over. I’m open to comments from anyone who knows the topic and who has read the article.

CCHIT is looking for 13 new Commissioners to serve a two-year term. Senior execs are invited to apply in July for terms that begin in October. The current list is here and you can e-mail your resume to CCHIT to be considered.

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta goes live on Epic CPOE. This may be the first time I’ve seen Epic mentioned in a significant press release, and even then only because it’s from the customer.

An Epocrates survey of medical students finds that only 20% of them believe widespread EMR adoption will happen in the next five years. Too bad they didn’t put a more reasonable timeline on there — in most cases, five years isn’t enough for a single hospital to bring up a full EMR. Still, they believe technology improves care and patient safety. When asked to rate the US healthcare system (such as it is), 40% gave it a D or F and 35% predicted healthcare reform in the next five years. It’s the Facebook generation: 6% spend more than 24 hours a month on the social networking site.

The local paper runs a story on MidState Medical Center’s (CT) implementation of Eclipsys Sunrise Knowledge-Based Charting.

West Virginia gets a nod for its EMR network covering 19 free clinics.

Politicians are knocking a healthcare IT bill around, but given how often this happens with no result, I’m not really paying attention yet.

Siemens Medical Solutions caves in to Acacia Research, which uses broad and questionable patents covering common technology to scare companies into paying licensing fees rather than court costs. This time, it was Acacia’s patent for PACS that got the company a Siemens check.

University Hospital (GA) gets a TV mention for its rollout of Horizon Enterprise Visibility, McKesson’s patient flow solution. We have good background in our February interview with McKesson’s Paul Gartman about the former Awarix product.

BIDMC CIO John Halamka tells a Red Hat Summit audience that healthcare can learn from open source initiatives. The Red Hat folks actually invited me to attend and report, which I appreciate, but the day job got in the way.

E-mail me.

Inga’s Update

A number of employers of HIStalk readers employers made Computerworld’s 100 Best Places to Work in IT, announced today. Included: Mount Carmel HS, VHA, Sutter Health, Palmetto Health, Partners, THR, NY Presbyterian, Intermountain HC, Englewood Hospital, Duke, and Cerner. (All the grief that Cerner gets and they still came in at #92 – and the only HIT-specific vendor to make the list.)

Picis is selected to provide high-acuity solutions to seven new Madrid hospitals. The applications will integrate with the hospitals’ Siemens systems.

Initiate Systems withdraws registration for a $75 million IPO, citing unfavorable market conditions.

Premiums were apparently not the only things that went up last year at several California health insurance companies. The California Medical Association reports that multiple CEOs earned $1 million+ salaries while their companies produced more than $4.3 billion in profits.

Connecting for Health announces that numerous companies and privacy groups have endorsed a set of practices to protect personal information and promote PHR adoption. The study also notes that the majority of the Americans see value in PHRs, though less than half were interested in using one. Only 2.7% of the public is using PHRs today and 57% of the non-adopters cited privacy issues as their biggest concern.

JAMA publishes a study that suggests RFID is potentially hazardous and, when implemented in the hospital environment, on-site EMI tests should be conducted. That could prove to be a boon for companies like Sonitor Technologies that use ultrasound for location and tracking devices instead.

KLAS announces an initial study of medical oncology vendors. IMPAC, IntrinsiQ, and Varian were the only three vendors with sufficient installations to provide statistically valid data. Varian got the overall highest rating, though all three were fairly close.

A record 24 million Americans, or 8% of the population, have diabetes, according a new CDC report (warning: PDF). That is a three million person increase between 2005 and 2007. Another 57 million have pre-diabetic conditions. There is no doubting that the disease and its complications continue to dramatically affect healthcare and the economy in general.

Former Misys Sales VP Scott Boyden is named senior VP of sales and marketing of Streamline Health Solutions.

Rex Healthcare (NC) announces that Novlet Mattis Bradshaw is the hospital’s new CIO. Bradshaw comes from The Seton Family of Hospitals (TX) where she was IT’s senior consultant and program director. We told you about this weeks ago, of course.

Catholic Health East will deploy Craneware’s Chargemaster Toolkit products for its headquarters and 16 acute-care facilities in eight states.

E-mail Inga.



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Currently there are "2 comments" on this Article:

  1. Re: Jerry Rivers–Read this blog for a while and then tell us that it doesn’t help you. You must be either new or slow witted. It helps me all the time and after all…I’m a “Grizzled Veteran.”

  2. Scott Decker next CEO of NextGen? Lets hope he does better than he did with Healthvision. MUCH better!







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