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Monday Morning Update 6/9/08

June 7, 2008 News 7 Comments

From McK Nugget: "Re: Vision Center. The new McKesson Vision Center is opening in San Francisco at the world headquarters (the second floor, to be exact). It has been under renovation for the past six months. It’s pretty cool to check out if you are ever in town." 

From Horton Hears a Who: "Re: hospital delay. St. John Health System has been implementing Cerner for quite some time." Link. Providence Park Hospital (MI) has pushed back its opening 28 days for EMR system work. Snip: "We changed some of our thinking around technical issues. We delayed the opening to allow for changes in our IT systems to occur. We are implementing the first fully electronic medical record system, in our health system. It is a very complex installation."

From Victoria Winters: "Re: conferences. Your HIMSS coverage made it more interesting and fun. You should report from others." It’s no coincidence that well known and well traveled bloggers are usually self-employed since they can snag add-on business to make it worth the trip. I’m an anonymous wage slave, so I’d be using my own money and days off. But, we’ll see.

From Steve Alaimo: "Re: Thomson Health. Heard on the street they reorganized their sales team. They hired a former VP of Sales from SoftMed to run the West Coast region."

A journalistic stretch: the local paper tries to goad Lawrence & Memorial Hospital (CT) into saying they regret signing with McKesson for clinical systems now that the state’s own attorney general is now suing the company for AWP inflation. It must have been a mighty slow news day or the paper works too hard to find local connections to somebody else’s story. First, being sued doesn’t mean you’re guilty. Second, guilty or not, the hospital is in final negotiations, so walking away doesn’t make sense. Third, the suit doesn’t change the reasons McKesson was picked in the first place. And fourth, it’s a massive company, so one part has little impact on the other.

David Schlotterbeck, vice chair of Cardinal Health and former president and CEO of Alaris before Cardinal bought that company, is named to the board of teleradiology provider Virtual Radiologic.

Don’t forget: your contribution to the next Readers Write issue is welcome.If you’re informative, funny, or insightful, there’s a platform for you. 

Jobs: Staff Software Development Engineer (Eclipsys – PA), Project Manager (T-System, TX), Senior Health Systems Analyst (San Mateo County – CA), Consultant (Healthia Consulting – MN), Healthcare IT Sales, Account Exec to VP (QuadraMed – CA). Sign up for Gwen’s free weekly e-mail jobs list – it never hurts to know what’s out there.

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Another Google Street View pic: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston (click to enlarge).

I see HIMSS has created another VP position, this time for a former CIO to push its new Organizational Affiliate (all you can eat) membership plan. From the description, the responsibilities are: (1) "leverages relationships with CIOs to sell them Organizational Affiliate memberships and other HIMSS and HIMSS Analytics products and services" and "assists the Sales team in their efforts to close the business"; (2) "help [CIOs] understand the strategic value of the benefits of participation in the HIMSS Analytics Annual Study"; (3) "Engages executives by getting them to participate in HIMSS initiatives as well as market exposure opportunities." Seems kind of creepy for a nonprofit to hire a CIO to sell stuff to other CIOs, but at least you can’t accuse them of not running it like a business.

Here’s a demo of the Myca patient portal/EMR platform that Jay Parkinson is involved with. Pretty cool technology, possibly unsettling to physicians who won’t even accept e-mails from patients.

Reminder: click that ugly green and amateurishly made Rumor Report box to your right to send me stuff confidentially. Seen a cool technology, have an IT department or vendor idea, or have something important to say ? I’m your guy. I’m also building my interview queue back up, so tell me who’s especially insightful and fun.

A new study proves the obvious: don’t get your medical advice from US journalists, who miss major points, can’t explain the big context, and fail to disclose conflicts of interest.

I missed this: the guy behind WhereTheMoneyGoes.com, which rails against profits and salaries at non-profit hospitals, has been outed in The New York Times as not only running that site, but also an anti-Obama site. "The operative behind it is Joe Novak, 54, a consultant whose colorful history in Illinois politics earned him the nickname Low Blow Joe. A Chicago Sun-Times columnist once wrote that if dirty tricks were an art form, ‘Novak would be Renoir.’ … Mr. Novak said in an interview that lately he had been working almost exclusively for Mr. Rooney. His projects, he said, involve exposing inequities in health care that result in poor people’s being denied medical treatment or gouged by insurers and hospitals, topics of interest to Mr. Rooney, who champions medical savings accounts as an alternative to conventional health insurance." I interviewed him in 2005 and, to a large extent, agree with his cynicism about "nonprofit" hospitals raking in the money and paying big salaries, although now I see that our motivations differ.

Kudos to four IBM employees in Ireland, who used open source software to create a free service that lets senior citizens sign up for a daily "how are you doing" call. IBM also paid for the hardware.

Pittsburgh insurer Highmark will spend $29 million (0.42% of its $6.8 billion revenue) to encourage physicians to buy technology, paying 75% or up to $7,000 per doctor. Its similar 2005 program ran afoul of IRS restrictions on money transfer, so Highmark will pay doctors directly this time.

eCast, which sells provider and drug trials software, will  bring on up to 100 new employees in Raleigh, NC to double its size. Moving to Raleigh: Medis, which sells software for imaging modalities.

The nursing union at HCA hospital Centerpoint Medical Center (MO) petitions the hospital to complain about nurse understaffing, citing poor patient ratings. The hospital says the suit is a union tactic (they’re in contract negotiations) and that it’s trying to hire 300 nurses in a tight market. In a related lawsuit against another HCA hospital, plaintiffs representing a deceased patient claim (from the court filing): "… that HCA injured them and other class members by maintaining inadequate numbers of nurses at its hospitals as a cost-savings strategy. According to their complaint, HCA developed a computer software program,  implemented by its subsidiary hospitals, that caused the hospitals to provide inadequate levels of medical staff."

UK hospitals have had 522 laptops stolen in the past three years.

Former McKesson CEO Mark Pulido, who was de-pantsed by Charlie McCall into paying $14 billion for the book-cooking HBOC and fired six months later when the accounting scandal story broke, now works for an investment company … advising them about acquisition opportunities. Maybe Charlie should emerge from seclusion to sell him something else, like his new company, Hazmat Systems.

The White Stone Group’s newsletter (warning: PDF) not only has an interesting case study from West Jefferson Medical Center (LA), but also a recipe for hot fudge cake. They’ll be at HFMA, but probably without the cake.

I was Googling some old acquaintances and noticed that Wayne Miller is now with Vitalize Consulting Solutions in their McKesson practice. That led me to snoop around the website of some other HIStalk sponsors to see what’s happening, so I noticed that Intellect Resources has a weekly newsletter for job seekers (news and position listings). Hayes Management Consulting has an online newsletter.

Providence Portland Medical Center (OR) implements real-time locating of periop personnel and equipment from Sonitor Technologies and PCTS’s Amelior OR Tracker.

I was reading an article about software that users truly hate. My list: (5) SmartFTP. (4) QuickBooks. (3) Internet Explorer. (2) Windows Vista. (1) Lotus Notes. For me hate to software, it has to be a resource hog, counterproductive to what I want to do, and illogically designed by an arrogant company. I know a few healthcare apps that could have made the list from what I’ve seen firsthand, but I don’t use them enough to hate them.

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Currently there are "7 comments" on this Article:

  1. If you’ve been paying attention, HIMSS has hired a few CIOs…only one of whom is still there. This isn’t a new position but replacing a really good guy who just left to go back to CIO-ing.

  2. I thought your comment about Charlie McCall was a joke…so I clicked on the Hazmat site and there he was.
    Seems he is more than qualified for the job. ..considering he sold a billion tons of hazardous material called ‘HBOC’ (Hazardous & Bubonic Overstated Contracts) to McKesson years ago. Yet I didn’t see any mention of achievement in his bio?

  3. Lawrence & Memorial Hospital (CT) – As always seems to be the case, if they had put half as much effort and money into maximizing the Meditech system they already had rather than changing to McKesson they would be up and running with all the clinical applications by now…. New CEO, hires new CIO, rip and replace…. Same old story, waste of money better spent on direct patient care.

  4. Re: software that users truly hate: If we’re talking clinical systems, please include anything by McKesson (especiallu they’re HEO product!). With the exception of Physician Portal, their software is the stuff of nightmares – both from support and from clinican use viewpoints. They are truly the Borg of Healthcare IT.

  5. FWIW- i LOVE the MYCA UI/EMR and everybody knows i’m “old school”. curious to see if it gets too cluttered when the chronics and inpatients are thrown in…

    /now THAT is good stuff, JP.
    //hope this UI/EMR takes off
    ///seriously 😉

  6. Legislation that would promote the adoption and standardization of health information technology is knotted up in Congress over privacy issues.

    The bill (S 1693) would help providers purchase health IT systems and require the federal government to decide on software and hardware standards for its own programs, such as Medicare, in part to encourage the private sector to standardize operations. Consumer privacy advocates, however, have expressed concerns that electronic health records would be easier to steal or disclose accidentally and that employers could use the information to discriminate against potential employees with certain health conditions, reported Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report. To address these concerns, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) in May added an amendment that would grant patients access to the EHRs, require that providers disclose breaches of privacy and extend restrictions on firms’ use of individual health data for marketing purposes. However, privacy advocates continue to oppose the bill and request that it grant patients better control over their records, including prescription information already sold to data-mining companies without the consent of customers, Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report added.
    Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, June 3, 2008

  7. OMG — like @2, I was *sure* your post about Charlie McCall running a firm called HAZMAT *had* to be a joke.

    Even if it isn’t — it still is!!! Until Enron, Mr Charlie engineered the biggest corporation value vaporization in history. Now, he’s some hazardous material.







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