The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine personally and are not necessarily representative of current or former employers.

Connect.

One thing that differentiates top performers from peers is neither skill nor experience — it’s talent. One key talent is compassion. Top performers connect their skills with compassion. They link their hearts to their brains. Connection is the difference maker.

As a leader, how do I help make that connection for my team? How do I create an environment where we can cultivate compassion? How do I help them view their job as more than a paycheck, but as a contribution to a patient’s life?

A motivational speech might spike emotions for a day or two, but I need something with a longer half-life. I need an approach that transcends mental understanding, a connection so strong that synapses will rewire and link the brain to the heart and infect the soul. Forever.

The single most effective method I have leveraged is what I term Connections. I have employed Connections for eight years, at two different organizations. The remarkable happens when you remove the physical barriers between clinicians and those who support them.

A programmer’s heart changes when he sees the impact of his code on a patient. When a service desk agent sees the face of the physician she’d helped navigate through the electronic health record, her heart expands. Sympathy awakens in the data center engineer when he learns from a nurse that patient outcomes improve because of the technology delivered with zero downtime. And an administrative assistant understands the urgency of communication when she personally witnesses the life and death stress.

Our brains tap into our hearts. Compassion-infused work follows.

Outcomes

• The clinicians who are shadowed learn more about technology. They learn that we care and that they have this incredible support structure surrounding them. This aspect is almost as beneficial as the Connections themselves.
• Relationships develop and then are cultivated, creating a family-oriented culture.
• Respect from operational leaders increases because they see that you care enough to take such action.
• While not scientifically validated, there appears to be an overall correlation between organizational outcomes and Connections.
• As Connections form, employee engagement rises, creating and nurturing new talents.

Employee Transformation Testimonies

• “I must admit, I hated this idea but did it because I had to. I have worked here for 20 years and for the first time I realized we have patients. Of course I knew what we did as a hospital but really, this was incredibly impacting and I will never be the same.” (Programmer)
• “I am not the same today as yesterday.” (Network Engineer)
• “I volunteered to observe in the OB unit. With clinician and patient consent, I witnessed the birth of twin babies. I never realized all the behind the scenes coordination required and it opened my eyes to a whole new world.” (Admin Assistant)
• “I never saw myself as part of the patient care process until now.” (Field Support)
• “My life is changed. I always wanted to be care giver but didn’t like blood so chose a different path in technology. Now I tell people I am both.” (Application Analyst)
• “I run marathons. I was more exhausted shadowing a nurse today. I never knew.” (Project Manager)
• “In one day I witnessed the joy of healing and the pain of death. I now see how critical IT is and why we need to be the best that we can be to support the front lines.” (Business Analyst)
• “I am a nurse and did not see why I had to take part in Connections. After today, it was like I was hit by a ton of bricks! Wake up call! Thank you, thank you, thank you.” (Application Analyst)
• “The experience is another reminder that the bigger picture of our health system, being a body of entities, departments and individuals, come together for the patients to have one more beat of life.” (Data Center Operator)
• “The experience was one that I am very thankful to have participated in and I can’t wait to do it all over again next year.” (Application Manager)
• “Patient care was the core focus of every area. It was really great to see the patients and what we really work for. Connections reminds us of what is truly important and why we do what we do (Security Analyst)
• “There is a lot of new technology on the floor and it’s cool to see how all the parts fit together to make the whole. People working with people and technology involved to make health care better.” (Business Analyst)
• “This is my second Connections, and every time I get a much more vivid idea of how my contributions and duties make a difference and reaffirms the promise to our community and the people we serve.” (Data Center Operator)
• “Clinicians are the reason we all have jobs, and I thank them for all of their hard work.” (Business Applications Manager)
• “It was very educational for me to see what the nurses and physicians do and how they use technology in their environment. It’s always a good thing for people working in technology to understand the business they support. Glad I had the opportunity. (Data Center Manager)
• “I have worked at 4 different health care organizations in 3 different states and this is the first time I have seen a program like this. I am proud to work here.” (Application Analyst)
• “Given what I saw I can’t begin to imagine how stressful their work must be. We need to do everything we possibly can to make it less so.” (Vice President)

I love a great speech and giving out raises and bonuses. But evidence suggests these have fleeting influence on performance and certainly do not develop compassion. In fact, some studies indicate the enthusiasm over a raise lasts two weeks.

I speculate this is because money only engages the brain. Conversely, transforming a person’s way of thinking and view of themselves results in long-term effects and a new person. Even the hardest of hearts and the most gifted intellectual will begin to view things differently. Once they’ve Connected.

***Leave a comment and I will send you a simple 10-step process for successfully setting up your own Connections program at your organization.

Ed Marx is a CIO currently working for a large integrated health system. Ed encourages your interaction through this blog. Add a comment by clicking the link at the bottom of this post. You can also connect with him directly through his profile pages on social networking sites LinkedIn and Facebook and you can follow him via Twitter — user name marxists.

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Top News

The VA has been on-again, off-again on whether it will build or buy a replacement for its VistA system, but former deputy CIO Ed Meagher says the VA and DoD may pay companies billions to write a new open source system. He now works for CSC, one of the contractors hoping to get the VA’s business. I knew the VA recently issued a $5 million contract to create an open source community for the VistA replacement and had previously announced plans to go that route, but I haven’t heard a definitive final word, especially when a group of Epic-friendly politicians is pushing the VA to look at commercial systems. The article’s choice of experts to quote about vendor products is questionable: Allscripts has done a great job creating an open architecture platform (according to an investment firm analyst who just put a Buy rating on MDRX shares) and GE Healthcare could work well in the VA’s environment (according to a government sales guy from GE Healthcare).

Reader Comments

From Too Big for my Breaches: “Re: yet another data breach. I’m getting tired of hearing about these.” St. Francis Hospital (DE) apologizes for a doctor’s loss of a thumb drive containing information on 474 maternity patients. He lost it in the spring, but someone mailed it back to him on June and he didn’t report it until then, pushing the hospital’s 60-day deadline to report the loss. The doctor was authorized to copy the information but violated hospital policy by not encrypting the drive. He must have been researching old cases — the hospital says the in utero babies whose records he copied are now nine or 10 years old.

From Victory at Sea: “Re: UAB. I believe that most people in healthcare are honest and want to help people, but there’s a lot of money rolling around inside these organizations (vendors too) and temptation is always to be found for those who are open to it.” The FBI launches an investigation into Alabama’s only organ donation center, UAB-run Alabama Organ Center, after discovering that its director and associated director had an “improper financial relationship with a vendor.” UAB has fired the employees and parted ways with the unnamed vendor.

From TxPathDr: “Re: Jason Dufner. Anyboy else notice that he had a Greenway Medical logo on his chest for the PGA tournament in Atlanta this week? I can’t remember ever seeing an EMR company logo on a golfer before.” Greenway struck a deal a few weeks back to have him wear their logo and be available for marketing and company-sponsored events. The green logo really pops on his pink shirt.

From A CEO: “Re: our interview. Questions I get from healthcare trade rags and the financial press are vanilla – my sense is the editors / journalists are just trying to get their stories written vs. trying to arrive at insights relevant to their readership. I found your questions intellectually stimulating. Keep doing what you are doing – we appreciate it.” Thanks, both for doing the interview and for the nice words. I don’t like asking stupid questions, at least when I can help it, so I treat my interviews as a conversation. As in most conversations, not everybody is fascinated by every interview of the hundreds I’ve done – it depends on their area of interest. As for me, everybody I’ve interviewed has taught me something.

From Bruce Werner: “Re: interview with our CEO, Mark Debnam. The HIStalk interview was a big success. Our Facebook ‘likes’ jumped significantly. We are proud to be part of the HIStalk family.” Mark of Quality IT Partners and I are both progressive music nerds, so we were nearly breathless in discussing the latest tours and albums from Yes and Asia, which I omitted from the interview transcript since, puzzlingly, not everybody is a fanboy for semi-obscure bands whose heyday was a couple of generations ago.

From Chillicothe: “Re: Epic. Wondering if you saw this?” Several readers sent over a link to that story in The Examiner, a free, conservative DC-area newspaper. It’s all rehash: Judy Faulkner of Epic was appointed to the HIT Policy Committee and Epic employees have given $300K to Democrats since 2006 (doesn’t sound like much for a company of that size). Surely nobody’s shocked that donors get some reciprocal back-scratching, like being appointed, but her spot was set aside as a vendor rep, so why not her? The article takes a somewhat slanted position that Epic isn’t open to interoperability (the article’s one quoted source to back that statement – CEO Glen Tullman of Epic competitor Allscripts, who is himself a lot better connected politically than Judy will ever be). The rag finds a hidden Obama agenda — the examples he’s given of well-run hospitals (Geisinger, Kaiser, Cleveland Clinic, and Mayo) are all Epic customers. One thing I might agree with: it would indeed be a bit suspicious if Epic got the VA’s bid (which doesn’t seem to be happening, at least at this moment) but otherwise, they’re getting plenty of business without government help. And yes, the Obama administration was mighty generous with our money in bribing providers to use EMRs they weren’t spending their own money on. 

From The PACS Designer: “Re: Toodledo. Will Weider of Candid CIO blog fame recently posted about a to-do listing app called Toodledo. You can get Toodledo versions for your mobile phone, as well as an app to add it to your e-mail, on your calendar, and integrate it directly into your web browser.” I’d be interested if it does recurring events and reminders. I don’t use Outlook at home and I’m finding Google Calendar to be pretty sucky when it comes to reminders. In fact, I’m becoming slowly annoyed at most things about Gmail and Google Docs – the spare design was cute at first, but everything feels clunky and I still don’t like the “conversation” design of Gmail since I’m always deleting entire message threads by mistake.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Intermedix, a provider of RCM services for emergency healthcare services, buys the assets of RCM-provider Comprehensive Medical Billing Solutions of Oklahoma City.

Axiom Systems acquires Ivertexo Internet Solutions, a provider of administrative software solutions for healthcare providers.

MedQuist Holdings announced Q2 numbers Tuesday morning: revenue flat, EPS $0.11 vs. -$0.06. Its acquisition of M*Modal gets clearance to be completed in August. MedQuist shares made the list of biggest Nasdaq losers Tuesday, down 18%. The company says it’s pushing more work offshore, but is being negatively impacted by customers sending work offshore themselves, by customers using speech recognition instead of transcription (which I’m sure is why they are buying speech recognition provider M*Modal for $130 million) , and by providers focusing on EHRs.

Vocera files SEC paperwork for its $80 million IPO.

Cooper County Memorial Hospital (MO) will spend $2.5 million for Meditech, which it selected over Cerner and Healthland. Hospital CEO Allen Waldo says, “Meditech won the contract because the hospital’s clinicians thought it was more user-friendly and had a better data recovery system.”

The VA awards ICS Nett and Beacon Enterprise Solutions Group a $3.4 million contract to provide the management and installation of an RTLS solution for tracking equipment, supplies, implants, and surgical instruments.

St. Joseph’s Medical Center (CA) selects PerfectServe’s voice, mobile, and Web-based clinical communications system.

The Australian government chooses a consortium of eight firms to participate in the infrastructure build of its $466.7 million personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR). Winners include Accenture ($47.8 million), Oracle ($17.8 million), and Orion Health ($11 million) along with sub-contractors Telstra, Cerner, ThinkPlace, Extensia, and Ocean Informatics.

People

Lehigh Valley Health Network promotes Donald L. Levick, MD, MBA to CMIO.

Former McKesson Health Solutions CFO and VP Peter P. Csapo will join VHA as CFO.

Beebe Medical Center (DE) names Jeffrey Hawtof, MD VP of medical operations and informatics.

Kevin Groskreutz is promoted to CIO of Hospital Sisters Health System Western Wisconsin.

Bassett Healthcare (NY) names Scott Groom VP/CIO. He was previously with Cabell Huntington Hospital (WV).

Announcements and Implementations

Resurrection Health Care (IL) goes live on its system-wide Epic implementation with the activation of billing and scheduling at 20 ambulatory care clinics. The practices will add EMR over the next six to eight months;  the first of six hospitals will begin go-lives in the fall.

Zynx Health announces two enhancements to its clinical decision support technology: Workflow Management to streamline content development and Export Validation to allow Cerner CPOE users to validate order sets before exporting them.

Vital Images / Toshiba gets 510(k) clearance for its VitreaView browser-based universal patient imaging viewer, which allows EMR and HIE users to view all patient images. It was announced in June.

Government and Politics

President Obama announces new economic initiatives to spur growth and create jobs in rural areas, including loan programs to enable hospitals to purchase HIT. The administration also announces a loan repayment program for more than 1,300 small, rural hospitals to recruit new physicians. The White House estimates that the addition of one new primary care physician in a rural community generates $1.5 million in annual revenue and creates 23 jobs annually.

FDA will hold a public workshop seeking input on what types of mobile medical applications it should regulate on September 12-13 in Silver Spring, MD. This follows FDA’s July draft guidance on that topic.

A proposed compost facility in Freetown, MA is stinking up Meditech’s plan to develop a new office building that could bring 800 jobs to the area. The city is looking into the issue.

CEO compensation at Boston’s nonprofit teaching hospitals is leveling off, with 2009 pay equal to or less than the previous year’s. Elaine S. Ullian, the former CEO of Boston Medical Center experienced one of the biggest declines: $1.8 million in 2009 compared to $4.8 million in 2009.

About 40% of EDs in urban areas e-prescribe compared to just 6% in rural areas.

I’m loving the site (sites, actually: this one and this one) of Atlanta anesthesiologist Michelle Au MD, author of This Won’t Hurt a Bit (And Other White Lies): My Education in Medicine and Motherhood. She’s darned funny, describing her book as: “It contains ‘pages’ and ‘words.’ I done wrote it.’” But if you’re on the fence as to whether she’s wickedly humorous, click the graphic above to enlarge. Brilliant. I think I’ll buy the book.

Vince Ciotti (and I) would approve: McKesson joins The IT History Society as a corporate member.  

Another highly paid non-profit hospital CEO: the head of a 326-bed Brooklyn hospital made $4 million in 2009 while laying off employees and closing clinics that served its predominantly Medicaid patient population. The board gave the usual “market rate” excuse.

Sponsor Updates

• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (TX) signs an enterprise license agreement for iSirona’s device connectivity solution.
• Canterbury District Health Board (NZ) partners with Orion Health to provide secure access to patient information.
• Capsule is exhibiting at this month’s Allscripts Client Experience 2011.
• Capario launches a new Web site, blog, and social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
• Scott Besler of Besler Consulting will discuss New Cost Report Changes at next month’s HFMA NJ’s quarterly meeting.
• NextGen announces a webinar and live demo for its digital pen solution, NextPen.
• MedPlus will exhibit at Epic’s 2011 Users’ Group Meeting in September.
• Practice Fusion’s Research Division releases a list of most-prescribed drugs, derived from its EMR database.
• The 25-bed critical access hospital Lakewood Health System (MN) selects McKesson’s Paragon HIS.
• Billian’s HealthDATA publishes a white paper called Providers’ Perceptions: Mobility in Healthcare.
• Eisenhower Medical Center (CA) contracts with Wolters Kluwer Health for its ProVation gastroenterology procedure documentation and coding software.
• The healthcare business of Thomson Reuters introduces Payment Reform Solutions to help hospitals adopt new payment methodologies.
• Kyle Swarts joins Culbert Healthcare Solutions as a regional sales executive.
• The District of Columbia Primary Care Association subscribes to CapSite’s online service, giving its network of providers the ability to identify technology pricing and packaging options.
• Kareo hires James Mathews its first VP of business development. He has worked for Sage Healthcare, Carefx, and WebMD.
• GE Healthcare will launch Centricity Business 5.0 at next week’s Centricity Business National Users’ Conference in Boston.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

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Quality Systems, Inc. announced this afternoon that it will acquire CQI Solutions, Inc. of New Braunfels, TX, which offers hospital systems for surgery management and patient scheduling. CQI will become part of the NextGen Inpatient Solutions business of Quality Systems, with its applications offered as both standalone and integrated products. 

Steve Puckett, executive vice president of Quality Systems, was quoted in the announcement as saying, “We are pleased to extend our portfolio to meet these cross-departmental needs, demonstrating our commitment to the community and rural hospital marketplace. With the additional integration of our award-winning ambulatory solutions, our inpatient and ambulatory clients are now collecting critical data across the care continuum, helping them meet requirements of quality of care initiatives and current business drivers such as Meaningful Use, where clients have already earned in excess of $5 million in incentives.”

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In the realm of medical devices, this is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. University of Illinois engineering professor John A. Rogers and team have designed a sensor that’s about as obtrusive as a temporary tattoo. Not only can it pick up biometric data, but when placed on the throat, it can sense differences in spoken words such as “stop” and “go,” as well as directional commands. Hot news for patients with muscular or neurological conditions, it appears in last week’s Science.

Pardon me while I embrace my inner physics geek, but the sensor adheres using the van der Waals force, which is what geckos use to climb glass. Sounds funny, but it’s a big deal for patients who are allergic to medical adhesives. Tuck that away for your next Trivia Night.

I came across too many juicy tidbits this week to hold them for EP Talk, so this week’s Curbside Consult is more newsy than usual. Some recent all-nighters and an insane volume of Meaningful-Use related work also may have caused my attention span to be so short I’m not sure I’m capable of crafting an entirely cohesive page-long feature at the moment.

And did I mention the not-so-subtle influence of Las Vegas, home of total sensory overload? (BTW, it’s chock full of Siemens people. I thought about crashing, but maybe some readers can send me reviews and commentary from the Innovations ’11 Customer Education Symposium.)

Now that some vendors have finally tweaked their systems to allow appropriate documentation, the World Health Organization declares the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic over. It doesn’t mean that the virus has gone away, just that it no longer meets pandemic standards. As an IT person, this was a great litmus test for the ability of vendors to be nimble. Quite a few were able to load systems with the ability to document, treat, and track quickly; several were less fortunate. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen emerging diseases (remember SARS?) and certainly won’t be the last, but hopefully next time it will be easier for the end users.

The Patient Right to Know Act will bring back a controversial Illinois database housing information on physicians, including malpractice settlements and judgment information. The database and its associated Web-based tool went offline following an Illinois Supreme Court decision regarding a medical malpractice reform law. The database will contain information on over 46,000 physicians and should be online in a few months.

Speaking of state news, Kentucky and Ohio are banding together to share prescription data. KASPER, the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting system, will connect with the Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System, also known as OARRS. (Not to be confused with the band O.A.R., which if Mr. H hasn’t listened to them yet, he should check them out — their new album was released last week.) Focusing back on the topic, it sounds like a great idea, but I’m very interested in how it actually works for the doc who’s trying to figure out whether the patient is drug seeking. If anyone has details or first-hand knowledge, please share.

Athens Regional Medical Center in Georgia has seen a 15% rise in online scheduling since implementing a scannable Quick Response code in advertising materials. The code is different depending on where it is placed, allowing tracking for the most effective referral sources.

Speaking of smart phones, I’m liking Mobiledia right now. Sometimes I need a break from healthcare, and their recent piece on Chinese plans for an app to update People’s Liberation Army troops on the latest happenings was just what I needed. Watch out though – the site is fascinating but will take you Wonderland-style right down the rabbit hole. I quickly bypassed the blurb about the recent bust of counterfeit Apple stores straight to the one about the Chinese teenager who sold his kidney for an iPad 2. (I don’t think I’ve ever put three hyperlinks in the same paragraph, so you can tell how addicting it is.)

I just discovered this is the tail end (no pun intended) of the World Mermaid Convention, so I’m going to check that out. If it’s a bust, there’s the Official Star Trek convention as well. Viva Las Vegas!

E-mail Dr. Jayne.

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From Big Ragu: “Re: HHS CTO Todd Park. Gave a great speech at the Health 2.0 NYC meetup Friday. He was a really dynamic and engaging speaker and showed off some amazing projects from Health Data Palooza, sponsored by IOM and HHS.” He’s at the 51-minute mark of the video here.

From Wanderlust: “Re: [vendor name omitted]. Lackluster replacement for [former VP 1], internal political fights over who owns product strategy, no progress on new revenue cycle product, offices being consolidated, open platform not what was promised to partners, and a shaky start to integration as employees freak out about their long term job prospects. This employee is putting down my copy of Visual Studio and checking out Monster.com. But wait, another rumor is making the halls of the office that does create some hope. That rumor is that [former VP 1] and [former VP 2] may be returning.” All unverified. I’m doing some liberal expunging since obviously there’s no way the company can confirm or deny so I’m not comfortable just throwing it out there, but I’ll say that Wanderlust was mostly right on some items sent my way earlier this year. I just talked to [former VP 1] this week and didn’t get any feeling that a return was imminent, so I’ll attribute that last sentence to wishful thinking.

From HappyNotToBeAMcKessonite: “Re: McKesson. Loses another large system, this time in Albuquerque, to guess who? Good luck finding Epic specialists through job boards. This health system has been cheap in the past, so it’s interesting they have allocated $90 million for the project.” Unverified. The health system wasn’t named, but I assume it’s Presbyterian, which signed a much-touted $22 million Horizon and homecare deal way back in 2001, the same year McKesson bought the rights to Vanderbilt’s WizOrder and called it Horizon Expert Orders. Presbyterian has a lot of Epic jobs posted that look like inpatient, so you can draw your own conclusions.

From Melina: “Re: Siemens. Signed some new deals.” Listed in the announcement: Regional Medical Center (TN) signs up for Soarian Clinicals and Financials; Jefferson Regional Medical Center (PA) goes with Soarian Clinicals; St. Joseph’s Healthcare System (NJ) will migrate off INVISION to Soarian Clinicals and Financials; and University of South Alabama will move from INVISION Clinicals to Soarian Clinicals.

From PumpDoc: “Re: IV pump design errors. I think you have given readers the impression that my company’s Plum A+ pump was the cause of the errors and that’s not true. Can you please clarify? Ours doesn’t have the start button next to the zero and decimal point. I’m guessing someone just picked a stock pump picture to go with the story. Thanks – I am an avid reader!” Correct – I just put up a general picture of an IV pump that didn’t really have anything to do with the article, other than for someone who didn’t know what an IV pump looks like. The article didn’t implicate any particular brand of pump, so it wasn’t the Hospira pump, which as the full-sized picture above shows, has the Start button on the upper left.

From Lodi: “Re: new HIMSS certification. Seems to duplicate the HIT program.” The National Science Foundation is apparently paying HIMSS to develop an entry level certification program, Certified Specialist in Health Information & Management Systems, kind of a junior CPHIMS, which is itself kind of a junior everything (advanced degree, relevant experience, useful specific certifications like PMP or CISSP …) Would you really hire someone on the basis of a credential proving that they are “entry level?” I’ve yet to see any general certification that’s worth anything other than to ease the sometimes justifiable anguish of the resume’-insecure, but it’s their money.

From HIStalker: “Re: salaries. A $6 million hospital CEO!” A hospital CEO salary survey covering only the Midwest finds the pack led by 314-bed Children’s Mercy Hospital and Clinics (MO), which paid its CEO $6 million in the most recent year. Must be a terrible place to work if that’s what it takes to get someone to run it. Mercy Janesville paid $4.5 million, Advocate $4 million, and Northwestern $3.4 million. It’s bad enough when private industry CEOs make massive multiples of what the worker bees are paid, but absurd when talking about non-profit hospitals, all of which ironically anguish publicly over escalating healthcare costs. If public school systems or soup kitchens could bill Medicare, I suppose they’d be unnecessarily run by $2 million administrators.

Honky Cat was moved to wax poetic about HIStalk:

An Ode to HIStalk
It’s 9pm and my bourbon glass in reach;
Mouse, keyboard, email, and alas,
An alert from HIStalk breaches the still.
Curse your anonymity!
Show your face and be criticized.
Yet the rhythm of my heart accelerates.
For I know the contents will amaze and amuse;
I may learn one morsel of data,
One shard of vendor information,
That cuts deeply to the quick
And such as a participle, hangs with an airy loft.
Or, perhaps a CIO interview that portends the strategy versus the reality;
Inga and her shoes.
Could she be the muse?
What have I to lose?
There is meaningful use.

This week’s Time Capsule editorial from 2006 lauds the hard-nosed vendor negotiation style of former NPfIT head Richard Granger. A snip: “Granger holds firm and goes public when he has to, unafraid to rip recalcitrant vendors by name. I like to picture him as a Gordon Ramsay-type scrapper, happy to take someone down a notch when they need it.” Knowing now that NPfIT is pretty much ash-heaped, you might smirk that I was way off base, but I argue no: the real problem was that, despite all that aggressive negotiation and multi-billion dollar contracts, there just were not any contractors or vendors who could pull off their part of the project. They overcommitted and under-delivered, but in this case, poor performance hit them hard financially and they walked away. Granger’s threats were a bit hollow since there were only so many potential contractors out there and the pioneers were coming back with arrows in their backs.

Listening: Big Big Train, recent British progressive rock that sounds like 1970s Genesis before Phil Collins ruined it by selling out to make teen dance tracks. Think And Then There Were Three, from which “Undertow” is one of my favorite songs of all time with amazing music and lyrics. Big Big Train is right up there with them.

A slight majority of poll respondents think hospital CIOs wield undue influence over clinical system selection and implementation. New poll to your right: should HHS study the effectiveness of EMRs and their impact on medical errors as Congresswoman Ellmers has urged? Click the Comments link on the poll widget to explain your rationale if you are so inclined.

Am I the only one getting weary of announcements proclaiming that XX hospital or practice is the first in some state to get Meaningful Use money? I figure there are 50 states, you have both EPs and hospitals, and MU comes in both Medicare and Medicaid flavors, so that’s a potential crap-load of self-congratulatory vendor press releases to wade through, none of which really mean a whole lot. Far more interesting would be a list of certified EMR vendors who don’t yet have even one customer that has received a check. It wouldn’t be any more meaningful, just more fun.

Iowa Children’s Hospital develops a Facebook medication reminder system for teens, especially transplant patients. The patient clicks on which meds they’ve taken and the information is sent back to their PCP.

Some excellent posts you might want to check out: Don Michaels concludes on HIStalk Practice that providers shouldn’t move too quickly to sign ACO contracts given demonstration group’s lack of success in earning payment, while Dr. Travis dissects WellDoc’s consumer health apps on HIStalk Mobile.

The Army tests its MC4 battlefield EMR  on iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, and Android devices, expecting approval to replace their outdated Motorola handhelds with tablets later this year. What they like: larger screen, gestures, the ability to run common apps, the ability to access the Internet, and patient lookup by their ID card.  Above is a 2008 video of MC4 running on the Symbol (acquired by Motorola in 2006).

It’s been a crazy stock market week, so I thought I’d check the current vs. month-ago prices of some HIT stocks:

Allscripts: $15.27 vs. $19.74 (down 22%)
athenahealth: $53.00 vs. $45.16 (up 17%)
Cerner:  $58.18 vs. $62.29 (down 7%)
McKesson: $79.02 vs. $83.04 (down 5%)
Nuance: $18.04 vs. $21.07 (down 14%)
Quality Systems: $79.77 vs. $89.10 (down 10%)

A conservative political group in Kansas called SOCK (Stop Obama Care in Kansas) wants the state’s Republican party chair to quit, saying that Amanda Adkins has a conflict of interest because she’s an employee of Cerner, and as such has a vested interest in both Obama Care and the government’s push of healthcare IT.

As you must know, Cerner Corporation is not taking a passive stance in hopes of remaining a key player and profit taker in the HIT industry but is very aggressively working, including to influence the government, to ensure its leading position in the HIT industry is maintained if not enhanced. The position of your employer, Cerner Corporation, is diametrically opposed to that of the State of Kansas, the current KGOP platform and the vast majority of the GOP rank and file as well as other Kansans.

SAS hires Graham Hughes MD as the first chief medical officer for its Center for Health Analytics and Insight think tank. He was previously CMIO of GE Healthcare IT.

In the UK, workforce management solutions vendor Allocate Software acquires Zircadian Holdings, a vendor of software used by hospitals to manage physicians (scheduling, locum, and evaluation).

Ridgeview Medical Center (MN) partners with Healthbox to launch a three-month mentorship for up to 10 HIT seed-stage company entrepreneurs.

One of the inventors of the IBM PC says PCs in general are extinct, just like the typewriter and vinyl records. He replaced his own PC with a tablet, but says the devices themselves are not innovative – it’s the social spaces they access where people and ideas meet.

The fascinating story of SAI and its family tree in both directions, in this week’s HIStory from Vince Ciotti (he’s the hirsute lad on Slide 9, wearing a sofa-patterned, suspender-supported plaid suit and flanked by an avocado green touch-tone telephone). He loves your feedback and input, such as suggesting which long-gone companies he should write about (my list: Atwork, Continental Medical Systems, HealthQuest, Health Data Sciences, Phamis, and TSI).

Children’s Hospital Colorado is hit with a federal equal opportunity lawsuit for rejecting a job applicant for a staff assistant position who they found to have fibromyalgia, meaning she can’t sit at a desk or work on a computer for long periods. She wants the job, back pay, compensation for emotional distress, and punitive damages.

Dan Moriarty, founder of HIStalk Gold Sponsor Stimulus Search, has joined Health Data Specialists as recruiting manager. They focus on resources for Epic, Siemens, Cerner, and Meditech.

Stanford bioinformatics researchers mine the electronic patient databases of Stanford University Hospital, Vanderbilt, and Partners HealthCare to discover a drug-drug interaction between the heavily prescribed drugs pravastatin and paroxetine. Said the study’s lead author, “We’re bioinformatics people, not clinicians. We can develop ways to mine these huge data sets for interactions that have escaped attention, but you have to start with a clinical expert to curate a set of drugs and effects so you’re looking for something that actually matters in the real world. I’d love to hear from pharmacists about the kinds of questions they would like answered with data-mining. Their drug knowledge is invaluable to this kind of program.”

West Penn Allegheny Health System (PA) will partner with Highmark, Allscripts, and Accenture to offer EMRs to private practices. A local physician says WPAHS is obviously trying to keep its beds occupied: “If a hospital comes into your office and offers to front you $250,000 for an electronic medical records system, they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.”

Florida’s multi-millionaire Governor Rick Scott is criticized for paying low rates on state-provided health insurance, which he says is appropriate since he has the same plan and cost as everybody else. State big shots (all 32,000 of them) apparently get family medical insurance for premiums of less than $400 per year. Wildly generous state and federal government employee benefits and retirement plans somehow never seem to come up in all the zeal to control the cost of entitlements.

In India, a former hospital COO is arrested for stealing the hospital’s patient data and selling it to other hospitals through a consulting company he started. The hospital got wind of what was happening and installed keylogging software that showed him e-mailing information from his personal account.

E-mail Mr. H.

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