Comments on: News 12/30/09

By: Ritchie Blackmore

Ritchie Blackmore — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 04:49:40 +0000

Hey, Statistician:

Methodology and numbers aside, I’d love to hear how a vendor could “oftentimes and easily” manipulate the KLAS results. I’m like “market researcher” above – we learned about our KLAS scores when one of our partners called and said, “Hey, nice scores.”

I even called them once to point out that an extremely positive comment on our behalf (“…they only hire people who have worked in a medical practice for 3 years…”) was not at all true. Once they realized I was the vendor calling, they all but hung up on me. I wasn’t even complaining about a negative comment.

For all of their problems, they do seem like earnest and honest people.

By: Statistician's Viewpoint

Statistician's Viewpoint — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:53:46 +0000

KLAS is controversial for a variety of reasons. Mostly because many providers assume a level of precsion in KLAS’s metrics and rankings that are unwarranted because KLAS’ survey methodology and statistical analyses is fundamentally flawed. And despite KLAS’ efforts to the contrary, survey responses are oftentimes and easily manipulated by the vendors. No serious market researcher or statistician would assign credbility to their metrics or rankings. However, theire is some value to the comments despite the flawed survey methodology. Relatively speaking, KLAS should not have anywhere near the level of credibility of a JD Powers or Consumer Reports. Instead, Zagat’s is more comparable. Should prospective buyers use KLAS to screen vendors? It may be somewhat directional but certainly not definitive.

By: market researcher

market researcher — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:47:45 +0000

Follow up on the KLAS commentary. I work for a small vendor in one of the niche areas rated by KLAS (no need to name the company) and we have been the number 1 vendor in our main category for 4 years now. What’s interesting about that is we are much smaller than our big competitor which is about 3 times our size and until the middle of 2009 we never paid KLAS for anything. As a matter of fact, we barely talked to them and never told them anything about who our customers were……We are the poster child for rebuttal in pay to play arguement.

By: Smalltown CIO

Smalltown CIO — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:01:39 +0000

Regarding Remote Monitoring of ICU patients – Many would consider this research a reason for not proceeding forward with remote monitoring. Working in rural healthcare, I would suggest the opposite. There are many more reasons to use remote monitoring other than improvement in patient care including:

- Keeping the patient local so that it is much easier on family members to stay in contact with the patient.

- Formal access to intensivists by local family physicians for consultative purposes.

- While not a valid reason by many, there is a financial benefit to the rural hospital by keeping the patient at their facility.

Yes, there many not be an improvement in mortality rates, but it does seem to suggest that it doesn’t do any harm either and still provides additional benefits.

By: Suzie, RN

Suzie, RN — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:44:15 +0000

When it comes to patient safety and outcomes, KLASS and any other “rankings” are useless. Make the devices accountable to safety and efficacy of medical care, period.

As for the Santa ad, by your comment, you have shown yourself to be a great straight man, Mr. H___What is the difference between syph and an EMR? Ypu probably know the punch line if you ever worked the wards.

As for medical care at a distance as JAMA reports:
“’Remote monitoring of ICU patients was not associated with an overall improvement in mortality or LOS.’ It’s the CPOE problem, however – many of the institutions had it, but weren’t really using it (although that in itself might, as for CPOE, give an organization reason to question its own capabilities before whipping out the checkbook).”

It just goes to show that bedside medicine has not been supplanted by unaccountable by managing the medical chart. What a discovery! The CPOE problem has nothing to do with it. If the same study was done with bedside care and order wrting v bedside care with CPOE and decision support, you may also be shocked, absolutely shocked, at the wash or even better yet, that CPOE and decision support proves to be compatatively dangerous.

And with that, I wish everyone a happy clicking new year.