News 9/24/08

From shimshamrich: "Re: Thompson, HPA. Tim Thompson is the new CIO at Houston’s Methodist Hospital. Also, VCU Health System (Richmond, VA) had a very successful go live on GE HPA. Converted $3.4B of accounts from old McKesson Mainframe system to HPA with 100% accuracy."

From Bob Arann: "Re: Misys/iMedica. I heard Misys let Allscripts look at iMedica’s source code, which led to the lawsuit. Could Misys have been that stupid or were they trying to find a way to get out of the original agreement and take over development themselves?" Pure speculation, I should add, although the nature of the iMedica complaint hinted at something like that.

From IsItTrue: "Re: Hersher. I hadn’t noticed, but did you report the Hersher-CES Partnership?" Link. I missed that. Betsy Hersher’s company is working with executive recruiting firm CES Partners. She’s still doing her CIO coaching thing.

From Rodney Dangerfield: "Re: Peter Pronovost. He’s a new MacArthur Fellow." Link. Peter gets one of 25 $500,000, no-strings "genius grants" for 2008. I interviewed him in February about his "surgical list" idea that was so simple that only a genius would have suspected the massive patient care improvements it could support. From the interview: "I pulled all the teams together and said, ‘Is it acceptable that we can harm patients here in this country?’ And everyone said, ‘No.’ So I said, ‘How can you see someone not washing their hands and keep quiet? We can’t afford to do that. In the meantime, you can’t get your head bit off, so docs, be very clear. The nurses are going to second-guess you. If you don’t listen to what they say, nurses page me any time day or night, they’re going to be supported. There’s really no way around this. We have to make sure patients get the evidence.’"

From The PACS Designer: "Re: CRNAs singing. TPD knows how much Mr. H. likes singing groups, but I bet he hasn’t heard the Laryngospasms! Check out their ‘Breathe’ and ‘Waking Up Is Hard To Do’ videos." Link. They sound good for gas-passers. Seriously good doo-woppy harmonies. "CO2 is high, I think you’re going to die, and this won’t look good on my resume … your sputum is as thick as Cheez Whiz, I’m kissing my stipend goodbye." Found their site here. I’m rocking out to "Little Ol’ Lady with her Fractured Femur," sung to the tune of "Little Old Lady from Pasadena," of course. Excellent.

From HITpundit: "Re: sponsors. Gee, with all the ads on the site, HIStalk is starting to look like Times Square!" Where are those hookers and crackheads I ordered? But seriously, the long-awaited improvements are now finished (smaller ads, better layout, etc.) As of today, the ads are being displayed by a brand new and highly efficient method (one call to the adserver database for the whole page, not once per ad) so HIStalk will display ridiculously faster, so I’m really happy with that improvement. Also, the ads are now displayed in random positions (other than the Founding Sponsor ads), so you’ll get a different arrangement every time you refresh the page.

A couple of new text ads are to your right: DB Technology just announced its Enterprise RAS and Matthew Holt is offering HIStalk readers a $50 discount on registration for the Health 2.0 conference in SFO on Oct. 22-23 (featuring big names Kolodner, Shirky,  Neupert, Shreeve, Parkinson, Bush, and Bosworth).

From Kaimuki: "Re: Sermo. Any thoughts on them?" Not from me, although this guy ("Ben Dover, MD" – nice!) has some major gripe with them that isn’t clear (Sermo tried to have his sermosucks.com domain revoked, but lost). They’re getting investor money and trying to walk a fine line of selling anonymized doctor information to drug companies while not appearing to have gone over to the dark side. I suppose I’m indifferent to Sermo … if doctors like it and use it, more power to them.

From Helskini Hank: "Re: Thomas Hospital. Seen in the wild. The ‘Starting July 15’ signs are still up and they had 12 hours of Soarian downtime Friday."

ChartOne completes the spinoff of eWebHealth, which offers HIM workflow solutions via Software-as-a-Service. George Abatjoglou will run the new organization.

Listening: Dungen, trippy Swedish prog-pop.

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor A2M Resources. Vic Arnold (formerly of GE and IDX) has put together a highly experienced consulting team that can handle revenue cycle work, assessments, process redesign, and working in a management advisory capacity. I asked Vic what made A2M different and, to summarize, he said: (a) solving problems that everybody sees over and over; (b) fixing lame technology integration ("paving the cow path"), and (c) overcoming the myth that technology is the answer to every question. Thanks for the support, A2M Resources.

Brian McAlpine, formerly with Emergin/Philips, joins medical device connectivity vendor Capsule as director of strategic products.

Cosmo Battinelli is named SVP of product support services at Eclipsys. Most notably, he’s from Symantec, not ADAC.

BayCare (FL) is using Fujitsu biometric palm scanners to register patients.

St. James Healthcare (MT) signs with AHI Software for registration QA service. I’d tell you who’s involved in the company except their web site doesn’t work with Firefox, so they’ll have to be happy with IE users only (which counts me out).

Almost forgot: I added an "E-mail This to a Friend" button to your right that will pop up a handy e-mail form that you could use (theoretically, let’s say) tell everybody you know about HIStalk, complete with a link to the page you’re on at the time. Just sayin’.

Jobs: Implementation Consultant, Data and Interface (GE Healthcare), Application Development Manager (4Medica), Implementation Project Manager (MedAptus), Regional Sales Manager – Toronto (Apollo PACS).

A New Zealand hospital decides to pass on a project to use RFID chips to identify hospital bottlenecks. "We would be following the patient’s movements from A to B to C, but we already knew what that was."

From an offline conversation I had with a highly informed reader, here’s some bad news. The economy is tanking and Uncle Sam’s only answer is to pump more tax dollars into trying to prop up businesses that deserve to fail (see: France). Big deficits are about to get bigger, tax collections are headed south, and former Wall Street investment sharks are demanding unsupervised control of a $700 billion piggy bank to support current Wall Street investment sharks who screwed up. The result: politicians can no longer avoid the huge chunk of GDP that healthcare and entitlement spending eats up. That’s bad for healthcare, probably.

Hard times could put us in the same predicament as Australian hospitals that are so broke they had to stop serving meat to patients.

And speaking of ridiculous healthcare costs, GE Healthcare’s new CEO blames Washington’s rare desire to save taxpayer money by not subsidizing highly profitable imaging machines for the company’s declining fortunes. He’s working on the bureaucrats: "I don’t think that cutting or limiting the use of technologies like ours is the right answer. I think there’s a better answer. And it’s clear that we have got to be involved in coming up with that answer." I’m not seeing masses of people dropping dead from lack of imagery, so I’m not so sure there is a better answer.

I’m a little more upbeat in this week’s newsletter editorial: "This Is No Time for Timidity: Why Contrarians Taking Bold Steps Instead of Moaning About Poor Financial Conditions Will Win."

I got yer Windows Mobile 5250 emulator right here, pal.

A UConn nursing professor rolls out her NIH grant-funded patient education application, which collects information from patients on a touch screen in the physician’s office, provides education, and summarizes the information for the physician.

A patient dies from a chemo overdose at a London hospital, which the hospital blames on its computer system.

Wake Forest University (NC) will host an EHR conference October 1-3. I’ve heard of nearly none of the speakers other than "of course I’ll be there" John Halamka and I’d question the wisdom of giving Microsoft and IBM a speaking slot, but it might be OK.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

El Camino Hospital is offering its affiliated physician group subsidies for eClinicalWorks. Members of the Independent Physicians of El Camino Hospital will have the option to use ECW’s PM/EMR interfaced with the hospital’s systems.

Ashtabula County Medical Center (OH) has successfully implemented QuadraMed’s Pharmacy Integrated Medical Management solution.

AHIC Successor announces the appointment of its 15-member board. Members include an assortment of people across the HIT spectrum.

Orlando officials and local healthcare leaders are working together to expand the area’s medical tourism. By leverage its vast tourism resources and ever-growing healthcare infrastructure, Orlando hopes to increase visitors to the region. I can think of all sorts of bad Mickey Mouse surgery jokes, but I will leave those to readers.

Speaking of medical tourism, a Deloitte Center for Health Solutions study concludes that 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for medical care in 2007. The number is anticipated to be six million by 2010.

I am an official Chrome convert, finding it so much faster than Internet Explorer. An annoying problem, however, is that I can’t seem to view YouTube videos with Chrome (I get about two seconds and it stops). I happened to be looking for a video version of the reader-recommended song, “You can have my husband, but please don’t mess with my man.”

What were these guys thinking? Two University of NM Hospital employees are fired for using their cell phone cameras to take pictures of patients receiving treatment, then posting them on MySpace. The photos were mainly close-ups of injuries. The pair was fired for violating a hospital policy against using cell phones in patient areas. Obviously the hospital just wants the matter to go away, calling the situation an employment issue that has not involved law enforcement. Hopefully no ambulance chasers, either.

Picis launches its new eView for CriticalCare Manager solution. The product is designed to consolidate clinically relevant information for the ICU census and present in a concise web-based view. Picis also announced several enhancements to its core perioperative and critical care clinical automation solutions.

Former LeapFrog CEO Suzanne Delbanco is named president of Arrowsight’s new healthcare division. Arrowsight Medical will use video auditing to assure that employees are following quality and safety protocols. Sounds kind of big brotherish to me.

CareTech Solutions is chosen as IT outsourcer for Port Huron Hospital (MI). The company also announced that it earned the top score (94.6) in a recent KLAS study on extensive outsourcing, including a 100% "would you buy it again."

Another organization announcing a milestone is the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN). Less than a year after being named one of nine initial HIEs to participate in HHS’s NHIN trial implementations, DHIN became the first fully operational statewide HIE. With its partner Medicity, DHIN has also successfully connected with other NHIN participants. Got acronyms?

Meanwhile, the MidSouth eHealth Alliance, a Memphis-area RHIO, announces it has completed two years of data sharing and interoperability. The Memphis RHIO serves over one million lives. If Elvis were still around, I bet he’d be covered, too.

Vendor Deals and Announcements

• Adventist Health System signs up for GetWellNetwork’s Interactive Patient Care solutions.
• El Camino Hospital (CA) is partnering with Microsoft’s Amalga to provide data integration onto a single platform.
• Oncology management system provider IMPAC Medical is teaming up with Accuray to connect Accuray’s CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery system with IMPAC’s EMR.
• OrthoArkansas (AR) has deployed athenahealth’s PM and billing service for its 21 physician organization.
• Integrated Health Systems of Alabama will use MicroMD electronic health records software from Henry Schein Medical Systems at its 42 community care centers.
• EDI company ZirMed is partnering with Worflow.com, a provider of PM/EHR solutions.
• Elizabeth Wende Breast Care (NY) will outsource its long-term data storage to InSite One.
• Surgical Information Systems honored four hospitals and medical centers with Client Recognition Awards for their effective use of SIS software to bring out remarkable results in their operating rooms. Not among the winners (yet) is MetroSouth Medical Center that just installed SIS.
• Cerner completes its first sale in Latin America. Clínica Las Condes in Santiago de Chile will implement Millennium at its 220 bed hospital.
• athenahealth signs up for another five years of business process services with Perot.
• Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CA) is expanding is use of Eclipsys by activating Sunrise Ambulatory Care. I wonder if the hospital will have a chance to offer Medinotes as an alternative?

E-mail Inga.