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News 4/23/08

April 22, 2008 News 6 Comments

From SurprisewithSmile: "Re: NHS. It looks like a side effect of the ‘credit crunch’ is the UK Government doesn’t want to spend any more money on IT for its nationalised healthcare system. So the NHS and its suppliers are going to be locked into their obsolete contracts until this recession ends or they lose patience. The rumour at the UK Healthcare IT conference (HC2008) is that the NHS will reduce the scale of the national programme by allowing healthcare organisations to choose systems from the new framework contract rather than having to take the integrated systems that have had delivery problems and delays for the last four years." Link.

From Serrenity: "Re: SecondLife. I found your comment on SecondLife to be a little bit disparaging and a little offensive. I think that your characterization of SecondLife as pertaining only to Internet hermits and those desperate for phony friendships and cybersex. Wow, talk about a low-ball punch. I mean, I would have expected such luddite thinking and stereotyping for some other blogs, but from a technology forum? No." I know it has many fans, but I just don’t see casual business users doing anything than ordering the hip young techies to stick a site out there. I gave it a couple of hours, during which time I loaded a 35 meg client that ran like molasses on my PC, tried to get my headset to work in it (I’m not picturing CEOs in headsets), and went halfway through a tutorial and tried to figure out the mass of messages and controls required to perform even the simplest tasks (flying was cool). Pretty much like The Sims to this untrained eye, which is why I stopped playing around with that after about the same two hours (I admit that I have a short attention span, but I have do more computer geekiness than the average businessperson).

From The PACS Designer: "Re: CCR. The Continuity of Care Record or CCR will start to be employed going forward as sort of a passport of your health symptoms. Since it is carried or transmitted from one provider to another, you can help improve care if the new provider has as much detail as possible about your health history and the prior health experiences of your family."

From Marty Puccio: "Re: comments. Is there a way to access the site other than histalk2.com that automatically loads all of the comments?" Not that I know of, although that would be nice. The best way to see them is to click the e-mail update link. You can also click the article’s title to open a new page with comments displayed. Speaking of which, if you don’t get the updates, stick your e-mail and name in the "Subscribe to Updates" box to your upper right (and the Brev-IT e-mail newsletter signup box right below it if you’re so inclined – here’s the latest issue).

From Larry Zito: "Re: name that hospital. Looks like Winnie Palmer Hospital (Orlando Regional Medical Center). It’s a little less ominous in the daylight." Right you are, according to the reader who sent in the pic.

From Dr. Dobbs: "Re: AJAX frameworks. Here are some links to show how far they’ve come." Links: Screencast, sample Javascript widgets, desktop emulation, comparison of AJAX frameworks.

Listening: The Frost, late 60s Detroit psychedelia. Kind of Grand Funkish.

We did a fun interview with Rob Seliger, CEO of Sentillion, over on HIStech Report.

Jobs: Marketing Director (any location), Account Manager (UT), IT Director (NC).

Picis announces ED PulseCheck 4.0.

Great Q1 numbers for Cerner: revenue up 5%, EPS $0.44 vs. $0.34, beating estimates by 3 cents. I’m delighted to have been wrong — I thought sure they would turn in a bad quarter and, as the industry’s bellwether, foretell bad times coming for all. Congratulations to everyone there. CERN shares are up over 7.5% in after-hours trading. We’ll see shortly if its competitors fared equally well.

A bad Wall Street day for Omnicell, whose announced lower expectations led to a 30% haircut in the share price. Market cap’s down to $417 million with a PE of 16 even at the lowered earnings estimate. I don’t buy individual stocks, but this one looks like a deal (either as a shareholder or an acquirer).

Here’s an interesting story on the virtual physician visits offered by RelayHealth.

GE’s Jeff Immelt is taking big heat (some of it from predecessor Jack Welch) for the company’s recent and surprising downturn. Conde’ Nast Portfolio has an interesting recap of GE’s problems (too big and conglomeratized for investors to reward with anything but a pitiful PE) and suggestions to streamline the structure. "Nobody really understands your Healthcare business, so you can get rid of it however Wanchoo sees fit."

Sumter Regional CEO David Seagraves provides a somber update to the destroyed hospital’s financial situation.

Sad: a patient in a mental hospital for the elderly hangs herself by stringing a computer cord around her neck and raising it with an overhead motorized bed lift.

Australia’s Queensland Health is suing TrakHealth and its new owner InterSystems for misrepresentation. That follows TrakHealth’s earlier lawsuit against Queensland Health for cancelling its contract.

E-mail me.

Inga’s Update

Computer Sciences Corporation establishes a dedicated healthcare sector, leveraging its 2007 First Consulting Group acquisition. CSC veteran Deward Watts will lead the new business unit.

McKesson announces the availability of its integrated workforce management suite. Regular HIStalk readers know all about it since we did an HIStech Report on the suite right before HIMSS.

Since I am plugging HIStalk productions, I encourage you read the LingoLogix review posted Monday. We are starting a new series called HIStalk 911 to provide high level observations and recommendations for newer, emerging and/or smaller companies (at no charge and not available to sponsors just so everybody knows there’s no mutual back-scratching or anything). Since it was our first one, we are dying to know readers’ opinions, both in response to our comments and to the company itself. Thanks to LingoLogix, by the way, who asked us to take this peek under the hood.

Michael B. Kaufman, former Eclipsys executive VP, is named to the board of Premise Corporation. I was impressed to read in their press release that Premise grew revenue a whopping 260% in 2007 and 2265% over five years.

Unity Health Care in Washington DC selects eCW for EMR/PM. Unity has over 100 providers across 31 locations.

Seems the Seppos are not the only ones with HIT implementation issues. The Aussie’s HealthSmart project is at least two years behind schedule with more than half the budget spent and only 24% of the planned installations complete. The “cornerstone” of the project is implementation of Cerner’s Millennium clinical suite, which is not yet operational at any of the participating hospitals.

Connecticut IPA Fairfield (CT) County Physician Management Corporation and Norwalk Hospital select NextGen’s EMR/PM for its 200 member physicians.

MediCorp Health Systems (VA) purchases Sunquest’s LIS for a new Stafford hospital next year. MediCorp already uses Sunquest products at its Fredericksburg facility.

MEDecision names Tim Wallace as interim president and COO. Former president John Capobianco resigned last year. The company also named a former Horizon BCBS executive medical director as executive VP and CMO.

I looked over the newly announced Fortune 500 list, scanning for healthcare-related companies, and found a few familiar names. GE ranked as the country’s third largest publicly traded company, HCA was 31st, and EDS came in 43rd. GE was also the second most profitable. Cardinal Health was named the 19th fastest growing and McKesson is considered the 13th best bang for the buck (based on revenues per dollar assets.)

E-mail Inga.



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Currently there are "6 comments" on this Article:

  1. Re: Aussie’s HealthSmart project is at least two years behind schedule with more than half the budget spent and only 24% of the planned installations complete. The “cornerstone” of the project is implementation of Cerner’s Millennium clinical suite, which is not yet operational at any of the participating hospitals.

    Not totally relevant, but heard that Sisters of Mercy brought Epic live at over 200 clinic practice sites and a new hospital on time and on budget after they displaced a large Cerner project with over a 100M sunk costs into Cerner and nothing to show for it.

    You can knock those Epic kids, but they do seem to get the job done.

  2. Re: Second Life, you’re right Mr. HISTalk, Second Life isn’t all that. While there is a great deal of potential, today it’s hyped too much.

    A good defense/explanation of Second Life is here: http://torley.com/second-life-simple-answers-to-curious-remarks – but he fails to actually answer most of the real criticisms.

    My quick rundown: * Second Life is (mostly) a filthy red light district. * Second Life has almost no utility * Second Life is a declining community–so unless something changes, Second Life will get worse over time, not better.

  3. re Serrenity(sic) comments on Second Life piece: I am offended that you took offense. It is the blend of Mr.HIStalk sardonic perspective and Inga’s sweet enthusiasm combined with facts, rumors and rampant speculation that keeps regular readers informed and entertained. Your criticism is on par with pointing out historical inaccuracies in Monty Python’s Holy Grail or protesting the portrayal of American Indians in Blazing Saddles.

  4. CCR as a passport? That’s kind of old news, is it not. And whatever happened to PDF-Healthcare, seems to having fallen completely off the map.

  5. Re: McKesson Patient Care Advantage… It really is just the old PerSe Ansos offering that is built on a 1980’s platform. Where is the patient in this product? It says nothing about the patient, leveraging clinical data, or providing staffing according to patient condition based on… what? Where is the patient centered acuity that would drive staffing (the holy grail for nurse staffing and true balanced workload assignment)?







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