News 9/12/08

From Elliot Carlin: "Re: Kaiser. Bob Newhart is a friend of mine and he says this Dr. Tupperman is a urologist at the Rimpo Medical Arts Center in Chicago. Bob says Dr. Tupperman has yet to chip in his $575,000-per-doc share of the RimpoConnect [over]budget so far. Budget numbers ($3.2 billion before 2006 + $1.7 billion for 2006 + $1.6 billion for 2007 + $1.5 billion estimate for 2008) / 13,750 docs." Good work on catching the Bob Newhart reference I slyly inserted as a phony name (and inserting one of your own since I didn’t know that Rimpo was the name of the practice on the show). That $575K is the per-doc cost of HealthConnect if you divide the cost by the number of physicians.

From Kaimuki: "Re: RHN. It looks like Revolution Health Network & Everyday Health are going down the altar." I’m finding it hard to get interested in that shotgun wedding. Free websites that claim success based on page views instead of profits seem doomed to fail. Google raised the bar on those expectations when it was cool, free, and highly profitable all at once.

From Betsy: "Re: workshop. The Cooperative Exchange is doing a workshop in DC on Wednesday Sept. 24th. Wondered if you might give mention of it for anyone within driving distance? Agenda is pretty impressive. Check it out at www.cooperativeexchange.com. Also, I have an interview idea The SSI Group, Inc."  The meeting is about revenue cycle management. I tried SSI once before for an interview and they didn’t even respond to the e-mail, so I’m banning them (symbolically since they were already ignoring me).

From Rudy Polanksi: "Re: bloodbath. digiChart in Nashville, TN fired 40 people yesterday, leaving ~ 27 folks left." Unverified. Inga is seeking a company response.

From Jane: "Re: Epic. I’m doing an internal presentation for work and wanted to know if your readers could provide a list of some of Epic’s clients. I know about Stanford, Allina, Geisinger, and Kaiser." There are so many that I don’t even know where to start, so let’s divvy up the work and each reader contribute a couple in a comment until we get a bunch.

From Miss Pittman: "Re: possible HIPAA violation. I was doing a search on Microsoft Amalga and found what appears to be PHI on the web." It certainly does look like PHI. One screen shot with key information blurred out still includes zip codes for patients over 89, which is a HIPAA no-no unless I’m mistaken. More seriously, several more shots weren’t whited out at all, showing what appears to be a full set of ICD-9 codes and EKG strips for a patient whose name matched someone I Googled on the web, right down to the approximate same age and his address in DC where Azyxxi was born at Medstar. Well, they appear to have goofed, although I didn’t verify. I thought about e-mailing the guy to confirm they’re his records, but that seemed tacky (I bet that newspaper and TV reporters would do it since Microsoft’s name right is on there). I don’t like seeing people get sued over honest mistakes.

From Denver Umlaut: "Re: my favorite Web tools. www.jott.com – the basic service is free (it just left Beta – it’s worth paying for ), with reasonable plans that add options. AWESOME service – email yourself, set reminders, get alarm emails/calls/texts, for anything, from anyone, anywhere, all with your phone. I call their number and can say "Jott HISTalk", speak the message, and it would e-mail you the transcribed message along with an attached copy of the recording. It’s awesome for tracking and task management – anytime I have a thought I can’t forget, I Jott myself and get an email/task/text depending on my settings. http://www.grandcentral.com/ – you get one phone number (free), all your calls go to it, and you tell it what number to pass them through to – so you can designate a phone as active, and all calls go to it. Or you can set all work calls to go to your cell, and all other calls to your home line. Plus, when it puts a call through, it gives you the option to accept, accept and record, pass to voicemail, or pass to voicemail and listen in. And it’s free. www.xobni.com – resource intensive but awesome Outlook plug-in that trends e-mail and provides really cool features."

Agfa’s board says stories claiming it will sell off its healthcare unit are not true.

Hey, whose ad is this? Why, it’s that of brand new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor CareTech Solutions, I do believe. They’re in Troy, MI and offer a variety of IT services (including outsourcing), HIM services, web-based applications, and cabling and wiring services. They also offer outsourced help desk services that include staffing by certified professionals and analysts with healthcare and healthcare application experience. Thanks to CareTech Solutions for supporting HIStalk and its readers.

And speaking of sponsors, thanks much to Renaissance Resource Associates and Novo Innovations for upgrading their HIStalk sponsorships to Platinum level. We like those votes of confidence.

ISO publishes a Health Information Security Management standard.

Jobs: Regional Sales Manager, Healthcare IT Sales, Clinical Consultant, Sales and Marketing, Consultant, Account Manager.

Medsphere is having its First Annual Collaborative Healthcare Forum on October 2 in NYC, with John Halamka there to talk up open source applications like VistA (which he doesn’t use at his place, but he does have other open source stuff there).

Hong Kong will spend $4.5 million USD for security technology and will make hospital CEOs responsible for information security and privacy following a series of hospital breaches. 

Shahid the Healthcare IT Guy referenced these truly outstanding articles on how to do a startup demo (Part 1, Part 2). Vendors should study this as though another set of stone tablets just got handed down. I like this: "Horrible ways to start your presentation: a) Talk about your bio and your business accomplishments. (We don’t care, we can talk about that later if your product is any good.) b) Talk about the market size. (We don’t care, we can talk about that later if your product is any good.) c) Give an overview of the competitive landscape. (We don’t care, we can talk about that later if your product is any good.)"

Reporter inquiries: if you can help with sources for these stories that various publications want to write, e-mail me. Hospitals that have outsourced some part of IT but then brought it back in-house; hospital CIOs willing to talk about recovering from one of the recent floods or hurricanes; and hospitals doing creative things with low-cost data mining or dashboards. Thanks.

Newcastle NHS breaks ranks from NPfIT, going with UPMC for its Cerner-based systems, even though it will cost them more (but get them live quicker). Odd: "Therefore we believe they have got – and this is part of the reason we partnered with them – a tremendous amount of clout with Cerner. They have the ability to influence the way that product is developed. We are hoping that through that relationship we will get a version of the product that’s more advanced than the ones that have currently been implemented." They had to go to another customer to get clout despite being a customer themselves?

I gotta talk to this guy: Geary Davis, a biomedical engineer, Dartmouth MBA, and former hospital CIO, is now a practitioner of Chinese Energetic Medicine and acupuncture. You know there are some good stories there.

I’d watch this company: HIM vendor Precyse Solutions puts Pam Arlotto and Carl Witonsky on its advisory board, giving them a lot of strategic horsepower.

Norton Healthcare goes live with Sentillion Vergence for SSO.

Augusta Medical Center is using a flu pandemic prediction system developed by students at James Madison University. You’ve probably never heard of the university or the town it’s in, Harrisonburg, VA, but it’s a super school and a nice town, up the road from another really excellent school, Washington and Lee University, although I don’t know why I’m telling you this except that I’ve been on both campuses and was impressed.

A Columbia Memorial Hospital (NY) employee and her boyfriend are arrested for posting the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of family members of the man’s former girlfriend on MySpace. The woman got the information from the hospital’s computer system.

Goldman Sachs predicts a drop in IT spending this year, but says winners will be Apple, Oracle, Red Hat, and Google. Losers: Microsoft, IT employees, and onsite service providers.

Odd hospital lawsuit: a woman visiting a hospital claims she was knocked to the ground by faulty automatic ED doors. She was treated and sent home, only to return with "head, neck, back, and leg problems" that required "extensive treatment," resulting in her husband’s loss of consortium. They’re suing. Maybe he needs the money for alternate sources of consortium.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

From Former Soccer Mom: “Re: Sarah Palin. Loved your comments. She may very well be the first female president someday.”

From EMR Gal: “Re: mail bag. I love the mail bag. ‘Governors with five kids simply don’t have time for botox’- classic. Loved all of them. Perfect.”

From Manly Man: “Re: swine. Oh, Inga. A pig? Really? Ouch. I like your responses, though. Will this be a regular feature? I like your portrait as well.” As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, if it weren’t for Mr. H’s suggestion we get some “hottie” to provide psychiatric commentary, the mail bag piece would never have come about. Let us know if you think it should have a permanent place on the blog (do we just need to stick to HIT?) Meanwhile, if you have any neuroses you would like analyzed, drop me a note.

From Thriving in CA: “Re: A little correction to your post. Patrick Heim is the Chief Information Security Officer here at Kaiser (CISO), not the CIO. The CIO here is Philip Fasano. Keep up the good work…” Whoops – sorry about that.

With mandatory evacuations in place for Galveston, TX in preparation for Hurricane Ike, UTMB closes its clinics, cancels classes, and evacuates patients.

Modern Healthcare releases its “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” report that includes 100 companies. Is your employer there? Do they deserve to be?

Virtual Radiologic announces the addition of Brian F. Sullivan to its board.

MSNBC was running the replay of the Today Show’s actual September 11, 2001 broadcast this morning. I was actually watching the Today Show that morning, so reliving the whole plane/tower thing was pretty creepy (and disturbing and sad). I’m sure we all have stories about how that day affected us. I hope we never forget them.

Marlin Equity Partners is the winning bidder in an auction for bankrupt MedAvant Healthcare Solutions. The $24.35 million transaction is scheduled to close September 22.

Researchers find that Botox helps in the treatment of migraines. Coincidentally, I feel a bit of a headache coming on.

eHealth Initiative releases its 2008 Fifth Annual Survey of HIEs, which includes responses from 130 community-based initiatives. Some key findings: operational HIEs have increased 31% over last year (to 42); 82% claim developing a sustainable business model is moderately to very difficult; and 69% of the operational exchanges report reductions in health care costs.

Picis announces a new webinar series featuring healthcare providers, IT execs, and clinical managers. Participants will be discussing best practices for using healthcare IT in the high-acuity environment.

E-mail Inga.