News 1/18/08

From Latka Gravas: “Re: Cerner layoffs. Interesting that this subject was broached prior to Thanksgiving, when the internal job site was taken down for ‘construction,’ not allowing anyone to review possible openings and make a move prior to being escorted out the door. None of this has been handled with dignity and grace by Cerner, as ‘associates,’ rather ’employees,’ were escorted out the door by HR and security. This is from someone who is still employed by Cerner, but observing the action from my office.”

Speaking of Cerner’s layoffs, the Kansas City paper’s website has several pages of interesting comments from readers on that story, including one ripping the company by an Indian associate (you know you’ve stirred people up when the offshore employees are livid). Those severed are planning to connect at Ameristar Casino Friday night at 5:00 for a “We’re Finally Free – No Pity Party” to which all former and current associates are invited. They’re even planning a dramatic reading of Neal’s infamous “tick tock” e-mail (YouTube it and send me the link) which I’m sure all this will give him a few more Pie votes. With the big price drop yesterday, he’s down to $294 million worth of CERN.

From Shiftcycle: “Re: RemedyMD. Anyone every worked for them? Thinking about a job with them, but wanted to hear anyone’s experiences.”

From The PACS Designer: “Re: Web x.0 hysteria. What brings up the Web x.0 headline is TPD recently noticed a website touting Web 3.0. There has been a lot of Web 2.0 stuff, some valid and some not, but we are years away from even beginning to consider Web 3.0 solutions. Since we are only in the first inning of this new Web 2.0 era, be skeptical about anything purporting to be Web 3.0 ready. Instead, HIStalk readers may want to peruse the Oracle website and their Oracle WebCenter offering for Web 2.0.” Oracle WebCenter. PC Magazine’s Web 3.0 overview.

From Curious: “Re: RPP. Anatomical Pathology standards question – does anyone know how commonly RPP is used these days? Is it still in test phase? Will it be commonly used in the visible future?”

From Hillary Flammond: “Re: HISsies. I’m a little surprised that you only placed Picis on positively stated questions within your HISies poll. I’d bet that, had they been a candidate on some of the more negatively phrased questions, you’d have received some more votes for them. I do remain hopeful, however, that their performance and our experience with them will improve over time.” A couple of folks commented that certain vendors showed up only in positive categories. It’s important to note that I didn’t choose the nominees – you did. They’re exactly as nominated by HIStalk readers, with no intervention by me. Good to remember next year, especially for the folks who didn’t nominate but now are unhappy with the nominees of those who did. I re-checked the nominations and Picis got one vote in the “stupidest move” category and one in “worst vendor.” That’s certainly no groundswell among those doing the nominating, considering that companies nobody’s heard of got more than that and still didn’t make the ballot.

Jobs: Manager Corporate Systems, Sales Executive, Data Center Technologies Analyst.

Your opinion: for the HIMSS get-together, would you like to see any particular agenda item? I may have the HISsies announced there. I could maybe get a CEO or two to say a few words, although there’s no guarantee since anonymous bloggers are low on the food chain. Or, we could just eat, drink, gossip, and admire how smart and attractive we all are. I’m picturing Inga like in one of those old movies, wearing a fabulous gown and smiling suggestively as 10 tuxedoed guys eagerly thrust out lighters, jostling to be the one who gets to light her cigarette in its gaudy holder while she throws back her head in self-indulgent laughter at the silly boys who adore her.

For those who care (not me), the Most Wired Survey is open, with a new appendage “& Benchmarking” tacked on, most likely to appease survey co-sponsor and outsourcer Accenture. If you can buy the shaky premise of such a survey, the questions are vastly better than those from years ago, although subject to the same overly generous respondent interpretation. There’s a PDF link at the bottom of the page if you want a look.

Elsevier acquires Florida predictive analysis company MED-ai, finally putting an end to its years of struggling.

Alex Rodriguez, CIO of Ohio’s Health Alliance, leaves to become VP/CIO of St. Elizabeth Medical Center (KY) in a ten-year, $252 million deal. Maybe I’m confusing him with someone else.

Scott McMullen, formerly Misys, joins Medsphere as VP of engineering. From one open source evangelist company to the next, eh?

Sonitor Technologies says it gained more than a dozen new real-time location system hospital customers recently, with 20% of its sales replacing dysfunctional RFID tracking systems. That’s what RTLS stands for, I keep reminding myself, since that’s an acronym on the rise.

Eight Ohio hospitals will use Premier’s SafetySurveillor infection control system. Premier bought Cereplex and that product along with it in 2006, if I recall.

ClinicComp gets an Essentris electronic medical records contract for Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany. One interim step is to generate PDFs for inpatient records to share with the VA.

Defense and aerospace contractor Harris Corporation announces the formation of Harris Healthcare Solutions. Bart Harmon, formerly of DoD, was announced as CMO.

Forgot to mention: thanks to AT&T Healthcare and eScription, both of which just upgraded their HIStalk sponsorships to Platinum. Thanks to both companies for supporting HIStalk and, by doing so, supporting its readers. Sponsors provide the money I need to hire fabulous colleagues like Inga, pay server and software bills, give stuff away at HIMSS, and support a worthy cause every now and then. Give the ads a look and click over to those with interesting stuff. It really helps. I was far less jolly when it was coming out of my day job paycheck with mumbled excuses to Mrs. HIStalk about the odd expenditures.

Information Week looks at the cost of health IT projects touted by presidential candidates. Clinton wants $3 billion, Obama says $50 billion. See Harris Corporation item above.

UPMC pilots an internally developed “smart room” program in which patient rooms are equipped with monitors that display medical information.

Arizona surgeons are developing simulated surgery trainers for the Nintendo Wii. Surgical residents who warmed up with a Wii training tool scored better on tool control and performance.

Sun Microsystems will acquire open source database vendor MySQL for $1 billion.

A SureScripts analysis finds that 50 times the number of prescriptions were transmitted electronically in 2007 as in 2004. Allscripts was the most used e-prescribing system.

Bizarre hospital lawsuit: an injured construction worker is told by ED docs that he needs a rectal exam to rule out spinal cord injury. He refuses and hits a doctor who orders him held down so he can do the exam. The patient is arrested afterward on assault charges that are later dropped, but he’s suing the hospital because “he has absolutely no trust in the system at all”, “has post-traumatic stress syndrome”, and is unable to work.

E-mail me.

Inga’s Update

Opus Health Care Solutions names Brad Karagin VP of sales. He previously worked as a sales executive for T-System and, before that, Cerner.

Medicity gets some press in Green Bay, WI, home of Packers’ cutie Brett Favre as well as St. Vincent’s and St. Mary’s Hospitals. The hospitals, along with 11 others in the Hospital Sisters Health System, are implementing Medicity’s centralized medical record repository and physician portal.

Hayes Management Consulting announces their new Technology Solutions business division, along with the appointment of two new VPs. Former IBM associate partner Peter Zazzara is Hayes’ new VP of client services, while Andrew Treanor is the new technology solutions VP. Treanor comes from GE/IDX, where he served as VP of client support and operations.

I went to Sears a couple of weeks ago to buy a dryer (one of those “incidentals” that is never part of the budget.) Who knew that Sears also sells a loaded Linux desktop PC for under $200? Definitely less than my dryer.

Allscripts partners with billing company CHMB Solutions to provide an outsourced EHR and PM solution to CHMB’s 500 clients. CHMB will provide the hosting, support, and implementation services.

The state of Maine is jumping into the IHE arena. More than $4 million has been raised to begin the nonprofit HealthInfoNet. 3M Health Information Systems and Orion Health have been retained to build and operate the program.

Survey update: glad to see most readers are like me and prefer free stuff (you can never have too many pens or bags) and invites to an event (I still have some open spots on my dance card) over attractive reps. Also tied for the lead is cool demo technology.

E-mail Inga.