Monday Morning Update 6/11/12

From Consulting Dude: “Re: Accenture. Help me out here. Stanford is kicking them out due to non-performance on their contract for outsourcing and Epic implementation and support. Partners HealthCare is supposedly hiring Accenture to implement Epic. Does the East Coast not talk to the West Coast?” Unverified, but any time you have huge academic medical centers, there’s a good chance their own bureaucracy and executive egos will cause a vendor to fail even though the situation isn’t entirely their fault.

From RTLS Experts: “Re: VA RTLS contract. They finally announced HP Enterprise Services as the winner of the $543 million contract covering 152 medical centers. There are several sensor solutions involved in this groundbreaking project, but not much has been disclosed. The RTLS Enteprise Visibility software solution tying it all together comes from Intelligent InSites out of Fargo, ND. Centrak will be used to provide location data. This breathtaking investment has stirred the Navy to release their own RTLS solicitation last week for all their facilities and the Air Force is rumored to be preparing a RTLS RFP with the same focus.” Excellent information – thank you. I haven’t seen an official announcement, but information about the award, which was announced Friday, is here. 

From Certifiable: “Re: Friday’s comment from Nurse Informaticist. If they aren’t valued by their big vendor employer, I’m recruiting for a position on my team and it doesn’t get more informatics-y than this.” Since Nurse Informaticist didn’t leave contact information, I’ll bend my no-solicitation rule and offer to forward his or her contact information to Certifiable if they’re interested enough to e-mail me.

From A CIO: “Re: Accretive. I think they’re toast in most markets. I’ve not worked anyplace where we would sign up for a service with such bad press. Sure, you can set rules of engagement, but can you afford the PR hit if things to wrong and some reporter outs you for using them after their history?” I would tend to agree. Rightly or wrongly, big organizations look for scapegoats to fire quickly to make ugly headlines go away, even though those sacrificed didn’t make the decision unilaterally and often weren’t even guilty of anything. They usually end up suing afterward. Accretive has a real challenge on its hands. Shares are down around 60% since February and the class action shareholder lawyers are circling the blood in the water. Not to mention that Accretive’s chairman J. Michael Cline lost a previous tangle with Minnesota AG Lori Swanson (above) over a consumer debt arbitration firm that she said hid its connections to the collection industry to dupe consumers, which led one of his companies to file bankruptcy and the other to shut down. In addition to Accretive, Cline is chairman of Accolade, which works “one-on-one with your employees to help them understand their health care.” It’s hard to tell from the lofty description, but it sounds like they work with big, self-insured companies to guide the health services utilization of their employees.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: more Windows 8 details. Windows 8 will come with the touch technology from mobile devices and its own anti-virus software for the first time. Also Microsoft will enhance its Windows security features and give purchasers of new PCs now and until next January a certificate to get Windows 8 for $14.99.”

Listening: Edenbridge, neo-classical operatic metal that follows the formula: soaring compositions, stunning near-classical musicality by menacing-looking Northern European dudes, and featuring an alluring female lead singer. They’re studio-quality flawless on the live video. They were recommended as being similar to my all-time favorite After Forever by Spotify, which I’m using and liking. As someone commented on a YouTube video, “For kids used to plastic dolls with Autotune on, this is what a real female singer sounds like.”

Thanks to the following sponsors, new and renewing, that supported HIStalk, HIStalk Practice, and HIStalk Mobile in May. Click a logo for more information.

Three-quarters of respondents say hospital CIOs stifle innovation. If you’re a CIO stung by the results, why not e-mail me a few lines with examples of how you encourage innovation that I can run for the benefit of other CIOS, which might boost the perception scores next time around? New poll to your right: is the push to open up the government’s health-related data appropriate or overblown?

Constantine Davides of JMP Securities has updated his HCIT Consolidation Chart (aka the HIT vendor family tree). He says this will probably be the final version since untangling the HIT acquisitions hairball is an unending project. The only straight lines (no acquisitions) that I see are Epic, CPSI, Healthcare Management Systems, and eClinicalWorks.

Here’s video of Todd Park, asked by O’Reilly Media whether open data is all about the apps. Short answer: no.

A law firm files a class action suit against Emory Healthcare for losing 10 disks earlier this year when someone took them from a storage cabinet. It seeks $200 million.

Vince’s HIS-tory this time covers Dairyland. It’s good.

E-mail Mr. H.