Updated August 2006
Readers sometimes ask for more information about me and the standards I use to write HIStalk. This will be an attempt to help you understand my background, possible biases, and relationship with sponsors.
Why I Started HIStalk
I started writing HIStalk in 2003 simply to collect my thoughts about what was going on in the industry, which was at that time important to my IT day job. Readership grew slowly without any advertising or sponsor support, which surprises me to this day. While I can’t afford to make HIStalk a full-time job, it provides me with much of my personal satisfaction, so I contribute a lot of time and energy toward making it as interesting and useful as I can.
We could start a minor controversy arguing whether it’s pronounced HIZZtalk or H-I-S talk. I had the latter in mind when I started it, but I’m not too offended with the other pronunciation.
Why I’m Anonymous
Let’s say you work in a hospital that’s a big customer of Siemens or McKesson or Cerner. You decide, on your own time, to write a scathing letter to the editor of a healthcare IT magazine, justifiably ripping your underperforming vendor, but not necessarily representing your hospital in doing so. It won’t be long before your CIO or other hospital executive will come knocking on your door, responding from vendor’s heat to shut you up, threatening all kinds of unpleasantness, like lawsuits or intentional service slowdowns. Maybe you wrote that letter on your own time, not representing your employer, but I bet you’d still be sorry. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from having retainer-based lawyers threatening and intimidating you for factual but unflattering public proclamations. I don’t need that kind of headache on my day job coming from something I’ve said on HIStalk. That’s why I don’t use my real name, which not coincidentally is why I can also be highly opinionated and critical when warranted. If you see me on the street and ask me directly if I’m Mr. HIStalk, I’ll give you a vague answer to avoid lying, but I won’t confirm your suspicion. No one who works for my current employer knows that I write HIStalk.
On the other hand, I’ve been writing this for a long time now, so my body of work speaks for itself. If several hundred articles and thousands of pages haven’t convinced you of my credibility, then I guess you can go back to reading the rags. If you’re one of those people who say, “I can’t believe you because I don’t know you,” then I’ll ask: who wrote the articles in this morning’s newspapers, or the stories read by the talking head news guy? Obviously you believe who you’ve grown to trust.
My Background
I have several years of experience as a hospital clinical department head. I worked for a vendor for several years in a customer support and analysis role with a good deal of programming. I’ve run a small business part-time on and off, doing programming and selling self-developed software products. I’ve been an IT director in two large IDNs with responsibilities that have included project management, system selection, education, clinical application support, strategic planning, budgeting, programming, regional management, and full IT departmental responsibility. I’ve worked in a large academic medical center in a non-management informatics role.
Conflicts of Interest
I own no shares of stock or any other financial interest in any HIT-related company. My investments are managed in a wrap account, traded without my oversight or interest. Unlike most IT executives you know, I do not receive free meals, trips, or honoraria from any organization, although I wouldn’t necessarily see those as a conflict of interest since I’m not dazzled by any of them. I don’t speak at conferences or on behalf of any vendor. I have no business interests outside of HIStalk. All payments received for HIStalk are for plainly visible sponsorship, other than a small payment I receive for writing editorials for Inside Healthcare Computing. Other than that, I work for a paycheck in my day job, which I keep separate from my HIStalk work as much as possible.
Vendor Bias from Experience
I’ve worked with many vendors over the years and have general feelings about them from experience as their customer. Most of them are neutral. Those that aren’t: McKesson (negative,) QuadraMed (positive,) the former PeopleSoft (negative,) and Eclipsys (positive.) I also admire MEDITECH and that usually shines through, although I’ve had no interaction with them other than through HIStalk. No others raise any emotion from me, either positive or negative, so I’m dispassionate in reporting about them.
Reader Interaction
HIStalk’s readers provide a good deal of the content and content ideas of HIStalk. This takes the form of e-mails and Rumor Reports, both of which I encourage and value greatly. However, discretion on what to use and how to use it is mine exclusively. I often use reader information exactly as it was submitted, although I reserve the right to edit it for length, clarity, or style appropriate for HIStalk readership. The most common reasons I don’t use material or change it substantially are: (1) it would not interest the average HIStalk reader; (2) it makes a statement that is factually suspicious or unprovable; (3) it’s too long and unfocused; (4) multiple readers provided the same information; (5) the information will be used later, after further research; (6) the information is openly critical of someone I’ve interviewed for HIStalk, which I feel is inappropriate since they volunteered to be a guest for the benefit of HIStalk readers. I don’t provide investment advice and I don’t talk with investment people who want to take up my time to extract free information they can then sell to others.
Confidentiality
I do not divulge information sources to anyone. I often remove the only record I have of their identity to avoid any chance it will be compromised. I don’t use real names on postings unless they are expressly furnished for that purpose by the submitter. If the material seems to potentially identify the source by writing style or presentation, I’ll change it.
What I Don’t Like About HIT Magazines, or “Rags”, As I Call Them
It’s not hard to detect my disdain for all those free magazines that clutter up your inbox. They’re getting paid for sending you copies that you probably don’t even read, and from which you almost certainly gain nothing useful. Their job is to sell advertising, which means not saying anything bad about vendors, which means not telling the truth. Their reporters are greenhorn kids making next to nothing in salary whose background is everything except science, computers, and healthcare. Advertising rates are set by the number of copies “requested,” which means they’ll send your dog a subscription for free if you ask because that’s one more claimed subscriber. What they call “news” I call “reformatted press releases.” Exceptions: Modern Healthcare, Inside Healthcare Computing, and a couple more where they actually seek out news and write it well. When’s the last time one of their free rag competitors got a scoop on a story? Mostly it’s the same stuff you read on HIStalk weeks before, with everything except the feel-good vendor stuff removed, plus a lot of other crap that I wouldn’t bore you with.
Also notice that the rags have an incentive to pad out their issues with cheaply and unskillfully written junk just so they can keep their story-to-ad ratio and therefore cram in more advertisements for you to ignore. Price out one of those multi-page spreads and you’ll see why systems vendors charge so much.
Why I Read Few Blogs
HIStalk may or may not be the typical blog, although it fits the loose definition because it has dated posts. Most of what’s out there is uninteresting to me, poorly written, infrequently updated, and full of “here’s what I did today” drivel. We do have a few good healthcare IT ones to read, though, and others about healthcare in general. You can tell those I read because I occasionally quote them. I’ve never met another blogger personally and have declined (so far, anyway) to participate in those “meet the blogger” events, mostly because I’m not all that sociable and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to waste their time seeing me face-to-face when I write for hours a day right here.
Sponsor Benefits
I openly solicit sponsorship of HIStalk to provide at least some compensation for the time I spend writing it. Prospective sponsors are told in advance that they will receive no special treatment in return. They are also encouraged to read previous HIStalk writings, particularly any about their company, to make sure they understand the nature of what HIStalk is about. I do not give refunds for sponsors unhappy with my writing, although I may offer them the chance to write a rebuttal (no different than what I would offer to any company unhappy with HIStalk statements.) I do not censor reader comments about sponsors, although I may choose not to run them if they are generally critical without being specific (i.e., “Your sponsor XXX is a bunch of idiots” will probably not be run, but “Your sponsor just laid off 50 people - see this news link” will.) The only editorial advantage I might give a sponsor is that I’ll sometimes run a very short summary of their announcement or press release that wasn’t particularly newsworthy otherwise. That rarely happens, but if a sponsor sent me something like that occasionally, I’d probably oblige. I usually also offer them a chance to have their CEO interviewed, but that’s the same offer I make to almost any company in healthcare IT.
Disclaimer
The thoughts expressed here are mine alone. They do not necessarily represent those of my employer. Your reading HIStalk acknowledges that the information it contains is not subject to the usual standards of professional journalism. Much of what you read will be opinion, satire, rumor, and speculation unavailable from other sources. You alone are responsible for any actions you take based on this information. And, in case I forget to say it often enough, thank you very much for reading here and trusting me to keep you informed about our industry. I don’t take that responsibility lightly.
