News 12/12/08

From Andy: "Re: Hey, Sexy Guy …" Link. The AvMed HMO sends out membership cards inadvertently listing the customer service line with an (800) prefix instead of (888). You get a recording (like you would with most HMOs) and the folks on the other end are equally nasty, but in a different way ("Hey there, sexy guy … we love nasty talk as much as you do"). Audio here. I can’t believe people haven’t figured out, after all these years, that not all toll-free numbers start with (800).

From Annonny: "Re: interesting article." Link. Massachusetts brings up a new Web site that allows residents to compare hospital quality and cost information. Theoretically, anyway: navigation is not very intuitive and you have to spell the hospital’s name perfectly (and the front page graphic and tagline are painfully distorted). I screwed around with it for several minutes and never did figure out how to compare two hospitals unless their names can be found within a single search (like within one city). Nice idea and the information is good, but the site’s design is really bad for the intended audience.

From OHio: "Re: The Breakaway Group. They have decided, yet again, to redirect focus and abandon a product offering. Previously, they were change management leaders, then RIS/PACS implementation leaders, then Lawson’s learning partner, then EMR implementation leaders. Lawson Healthcare ERP was the #1 focus of the company, then the group was terminated and they no longer offer those services. Is anyone else sick and tired of these opportunists that are not from healthcare looking to capitalize in this sector?" All unverified. I’ve had a good report or two about the company from trustworthy sources, so I wouldn’t write them off just because they’re looking for a niche.

From eScriptionGuy: "Re: increases. Nuance Communications today announced that the staff will not receive merit increases this year; however, they will partially pay year-end bonuses (despite missing internal organic growth goals). The former eScription business achieved their financial targets, but won’t receive merit increases or year-end bonuses." Unverified, but even if it’s true, I’d still be pretty happy just to have a job in this economy. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but I’m a realist.

From Kent Winkdale: "Re: Doctations. A friend saw their product at an informatics conference. It’s a Flash-based EMR that takes advantage of Web services and sounds impressive. Does anyone have experience with them?" Kent isn’t a company shill trying to get sly PR (I know him), but I don’t know much about Doctations or anybody on its management team or board, although Louis Cornacchia (president and CEO) invited Inga to their MGMA booth in October in an HIStalk comment (he obviously was a company shill trying to get PR, but we’re OK with that as long as it’s an executive and not a PRtist).

From HIT National Attention: "Re: athenahealth. Seems the entire national media is going to athena’s CEO when it comes to HIT. Every time I turn around, they are in the news. I am curious to know what they know we don’t – they do mostly rev cycle, right?" Jonathan Bush is a very smart guy who is also press-friendly and able to clearly express a long and objective view in an eminently quotable way. Like most CEOs, his knowledge base extends beyond athenahealth’s core business of revenue cycle and PM/EMR. I’m guessing he can explain it as well as anyone, plus be entertaining in the process.

From Mark Loes: "Re: Contra Costa County. Announced yesterday was the appointment of David J. Runt as the new Chief Information Officer of Information Systems division of the Health Services Department of Contra Costa County in Martinez, California. David brings over 27 years of progressive executive leadership in healthcare information technology to the role. Most recently, David was the Vice President, Information Services and Chief Information Officer for Sun Health in Phoenix, Arizona where he had a 10-year tenure. David will be joining the team at Contra Costa County on January 4, 2009."

Listening: Crimson Sky, female-led melodic prog-metal from the UK that I found while trolling Rhapsody. So obscure they’re not even on Amazon or Wikipedia, but they sound pretty good. Also: Traening, fine, lush, dramatic, complex music by a long-gone band from Denmark (a more popular successor group is here).

pMDsoft introduces its charge capture software for the iPhone, which it says is the first to market.

A source tipped us off to the new version of Microsoft CUI Patient Journey Demonstrator. It now uses SNOMED-CT and has new ECG and angiogram markup tools. The demo script is here (warning: PDF).

The Middle East arm of Indian tech company Wipro announces its HIS Lite information system for nursing homes and small hospitals, licensed as a monthly subscription.

Maricopa Integrated Health System (AZ) gets a local newspaper write-up for its $83 million EMR project. The article splashes on a little cold water near the end when it talks about the hospital’s almost-denied Joint Commission accreditation.

Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Surrey, England chooses Picis CareSuite for surgery, anesthesia, and critical care.

Leerink Swann and Nasdaq OMX hosted a healthcare IT forum earlier this week featuring Glen Tullman of Allscripts, Steve Klasko of USF, and others. You can view the Webcast after signing up here, they tell me.

Speaking of Webcasts, several people have asked about having HIStalk run one on their behalf (implicit in that, I would hope, is that I’ve got a short attention span and am therefore BS-averse, so they would have to be entertaining and useful to someone other than the company trying to sell a product or concept). Do you watch them? Is it worth my time to do those? (my presumptive answer is no, but I’m always open to counterpoints).

Amanda Adkins, a Cerner manager over its Healthe government business and 2004 campaign manager for Sen. Sam Brownback, looks to be the next chairwoman of the Kansas Republican party.

Ray Ghanbari, former CTO of Ingenix, is named VP pf strategy and products at Vital Images.

Shenandoah Valley Medical System and West Virginia University Hospitals-East are working on a health information exchange in eastern West Virginia, connecting Shenandoah’s NextGen system to WVUH’s MEDITECH systems. In the mean time, the statewide West Virginia Health Information Network will RFP its HIE framework in early 2009.

Hospital layoff: Boca Raton Community Hospital (FL) – 39 employees.

Crossflo Systems buys the assets of three-employee Iameter of Belmont, CA, which offers hospital data analysis and process improvement tools.

AHIC Successor will announce its new name right after New Year’s.

Peter Neupert of Microsoft Health Solutions Group is named to the board of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

Red Hat invests in BI vendor Jaspersoft as part of a $12.5 million round of growth equity funding.

CSC releases (warning: PDF) a pretty gloomy report that summarizes the current and upcoming impact of our economic situation. The perfect storm is brewing, they say: Medicare/Medicaid cuts, declining margins, higher interest rates for capital improvement projects, more uncompensated care, and declines in elective procedures. In response, most hospitals have initiated such cost-cutting measures as delaying/deferring construction plans and IT projects. Forty-three percent anticipate needing to lay off staff.

Take a look at this RP-7 robot by InTouch Health being piloted at military hospitals. It allows for two-way audio and video interaction between a doctor, patient, staff, or family. The units are about $250,000 and weigh about 200 lbs.

Not that I am necessarily eyelash-challenged, but a girl can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many eyelashes. Thus, good news here on a newly FDA-approved product to enhance eyelash prominence (I am happy to accept samples of LATISSE and provide my expert evaluation).

Here is a question for you HIPAA gurus. The FBI is looking over the medical records of pitcher Roger Clemens to determine if he committed perjury after denying he ever used human growth hormones or steroids. Did Clemens have to give his permission?

A JAMA study finds that people are more likely to lose weight if they have a financial incentive to do so. Well, duh!

The Health Research Institute at PricewaterhouseCoopers publishes its 2009 list of top health industries issues. The economic downtown tops the list, technology ranks #6, and IDC-10 is #9. 

IT support and service provider ITelagen is a new reseller for the Allscripts MyWay platform. That’s the old Misys MyWay for anyone not keeping up.

The Memorial Hermann Healthcare System (TX) sells off a couple of non-campus medical billings for approximately $16 million.

In San Antonio, the Army and Air Force come together to break ground on a $724 million construction and renovation project at Brooke Army Medical Center and Wilford Hall Medical Center. The unified facilities will be named the San Antonio Military Medical Centers North and South.

In another sign that the economy isn’t all bad, Ryan Cos. announces the start of a new $25 million medical office project in Auburn Hills, MI.

This last weekend, I got my Christmas tree up and the lights on, so I am settling into the holiday spirit. A friend sent me a cool Christmas CD called “A Miracle Foundation Christmas” which will get even Mr. Grinch in the mood. One hundred percent of the proceeds for this $15 CD go to support the Miracle Foundation, an organization that runs several orphanages in India and provides children with such basics as food, clothing, water, shelter, medical care, and education. So, great CD, great cause, and includes Bob Schneider singing the sexiest version of “Silver Bells” ever.

A study by actuarial company Milliman, Inc. finds that low Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals and physicians costs consumers and employers almost $90 billion. The report claims that annual health care spending for a family of four is $1,788 higher than it would be if the government paid rates similar to private carriers. The underpayment from public programs effectively shifts the uncovered costs over to employers and consumers. Not surprisingly, several big insurance companies paid for the study.

The NY State Health Department releases $47 million to Kingston Hospital to facilitate its combining with Benedictine Hospital. The money will be used to expand the ER, to fund the new Foxhall Ambulatory Surgery Center, and to pay hospital debt.

Washington, DC is also handing out money. The city extends $51 million in medical grants for three healthcare entities to improve primary and emergency care for children and the poor.

It’s apparently not a great time for a career in healthcare if you live in Minneapolis/St. Paul. In addition to the 300 jobs eliminated by Allina Hospitals and Clinics a couple of months ago, Fairview Health Services, Park Nicollet Health Services, and North Memorial Health Care are terminating 200, 600, and 233 employees, respectively. Good luck, all.

This survey claims that 27% of American adults say they are "extremely likely or somewhat likely" to create an online personal health record to help track their medical history and medications.

Only one in five hospitals collecting data on patient injuries or deaths from medical errors shares that information with managers or others who could implement measures to address the problems. This based on an AHRQ survey of 1,600 hospital risk managers. Which begs the question: why not share that information? Wouldn’t it help everyone to get better?

An AHRQ report suggests that doctors using e-Rx were more likely to write prescriptions for lower cost drugs that lead to savings. If e-RX were used by all doctors, researchers claim the savings potential could be $3.9 million per 100,000 patients per year.

David Muntz and Lynn Harold Vogel are named CHIME’s newest Board of Trustees members. Muntz is senior VP and CIO at Baylor Health Care System (TX) and Vogel is VP/CIO at UT-MD Anderson Cancer Center (TX).

E-mail Inga.

News 12/10/08

From Kentomatic: "Re: ComputerWorld 100 list just published. Several notable healthcare CIOs made the list." On it: Joseph DeVenuto, Norton Healthcare; Karen Graham, Cooper University Hospital; Jeremy Meller, Marshfield Clinic; and Gregory Veltry, Denver Health & Hospital Authority. Congratulations to all.

From Wompa1: "Re: Video of healthcare seminar. Cato Institute, a libertarian organization, did an event called ‘Does America’s Health Care Sector Produce More Health?’ You can stream it in Real Video or MP3." Link. I like the Libertarian message, but it’s been totally lost as the government nationalizes entire industries of incompetent businesses and runs the printing presses 24 hours a day to create funny money to pay for it all. At least they could bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps, which built some truly inspiring national parks back in the previous depression.

From Inspector Clouseau: "Re: rumors. How safe is your site and how traceable are the reported rumors?" If you e-mail me or use the Rumor Report, I delete your message, leaving no trace (even though I also use an anonymous Yahoo account). I don’t name names and I often rewrite stuff so that nobody can recognize the writing style. Since I don’t know who the tipsters are, putting me on the stand wouldn’t help, either.

From The PACS Designer: "Re: modular data centers. Microsoft is publicizing its vision of a future style for modular data centers  With their Generation 4 concept for a data center, the need for more computer resources can be quickly set up using vans loaded with the configurations needed for each customer who wants to employ Microsoft Live solutions." Link (warning: video).  

From At the Mouse’s House: "Re: Pyxis. Cardinal announces new Pyxis MedStation 4000. Pyxis literature in the hotel drop bag at the show includes a footnote that Cardinal may not offer the MS4000 for sale. Their press release makes no such disclaimer. Is it real or a concept?" Cardinal announced the launch of Medstation 4000 Monday, but that could mean anything, especially since some of its businesses will be spun off within months. I saw no mention or pictures on Cardinal’s site, which is usually a symptom of vaporware. Here’s how to find out: (1) corner a company exec in the booth and ask who the beta site was; and (2) tell them your Omnicell contract is almost up and you need to know how quickly they could get 4000 up and running in your place. Enjoy the Midyear.

From Rogue: "Re: cheap technologies. This company has a 10-number pad with a programmable display that administers patient questionnaires. Used in drug trials but neatest app. I saw a waiting room sleep apnea questionnaire that was on the chart before the doc walked into examine the patient. Full disclosure: I know the guy who owns it, but have no financial interest." Link. I usually delete stuff like this, but it’s from a hospital guy. Look or not – I’m neutral.

From Moishesdad: "Re: Glen Tullman. I have to believe he is going to be making the trip to DC at some point. Glen has deep ties with Obama. Given the news over the weekend about the push to EMRs, Glen would be an obvious choice. And for Glen, an elegant way to wind down at MDRX." It wouldn’t surprise me either way. And while we’re on the subject, here are some of the motley crew nominated for ONCHIT by you readers: Scott Shreeve, John Glaser (that one is recent, so he must have scored points with his Being John Glaser), Orlando Portale, and Mr. HIStalk (hah!). If you’ve ever read the congressional transcripts of all those politicians ripping viciously and personally into Brailer mostly because he was GW’s boy, then you would know ONCHIT isn’t for the faint of heart.

McKesson announces (actually, the press release says "unveils," which sounds more dramatic) results of its pharmacy performance survey, then launches right into a plug for highlighted "good example" Vanderbilt, which was touted in the next paragraph as having paid McKesson to improve its performance (what a happy coincidence!) McKesson also sponsors the Most Wired nonsense, so they’ve mastered the art of making supposedly industry-serving surveys nothing more than a Trojan horse for a commercial pitch.

Thanks to John Glaser for offering to write occasionally for HIStalk. I had e-mailed him asking if he knew any good CIOs who write well who might want to contribute here (assuring him I wasn’t like a recruiter asking, "Do you know anyone who would be interested in this job?" to see if you’ll bite). He offered to share his thoughts on occasion, which is quite an honor given his stature in the industry (and his sharply honed dry sense of humor). Give him a little love by dropping a nice comment onto his piece from today so he knows he’s appreciated by someone other than me.

Let’s hope that the former junior senator from Illinois and President-elect is the apparent first completely uncorrupt Chicago politician. Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is busted by the Feds after trying to conduct an eBay-style auction of Obama’s former Senate seat. He also reportedly considered appointing himself to the office to give him a better chance to beat corruption charges (he could still do it, in fact, since Obama’s replacement is still his choice). He also suggested, according to affidavits, that he be named HHS secretary and also tried to take away $8 million in state money from a children’s hospital because one of its executives declined to give him a $50,000 political contribution. Odds are good that he’ll be the second consecutive Illinois governor to earn federal corruption jail time. The scary thing is that people from Illinois keep voting these scumbags into office, only to watch them get hauled off.

ANCC and Cerner announce that Abington Memorial Hospital (PA) is the winner of their 2008 Magnet Prize for innovative ANCC Magnet-recognized programs. One might be struck by the irony that Abington is a showcase Eclipsys site.

A laptop containing PHI of 50 patients is stolen from the cardiology department of Salem Hospital (MA).

Allscripts CEO (and Obama campaign policy advisor) Glen Tullman says he expects the incoming administration to promote EMRs and e-prescribing, although maybe spending less than the $50 billion Obama promised while campaigning.

HHS is looking for an ONCHIT policy analyst in DC, with pay topping out at $127K. I’m disappointed, of course, that they didn’t list it on Healthcare IT Jobs, but other jobs there include Epic Rx Trainer, Account Executive – Northeast States, Texas Regional Sales Manager, and Regional Sales Director.

A Harvard study finds that e-prescribing saves money if it informs doctors of the relative costs of various pharmacologic alternatives. That’s great, provided it takes the entire cost of therapy into account (required lab monitoring, likelihood of compliance for complex dosing schedules, true cost and not just phony AWP, side effect profile, etc.) It’s odd that everybody talks about consumer transparency, but nobody’s telling doctors what drugs, labs, and treatments cost. Surely among all those crappy dot-com business models some startup could have attacked that angle.

 
Brigham and Women’s signs for Omnicell’s SinglePointe medication management system, which provides automated distribution of all meds, not just those in the dispensing cabinet. I’m hating the name, of course, since it’s both conjoined and faux-Brit (like "centre" and "grille").

Software developed in Australia for GPS-equipped Nokia and Symbian phones allows security guards and other high-risk employees (including those in healthcare) to be tracked by supervisors. it also gives then a panic button that sends their location instantly when pressed.

Fifty Kaiser medical directors will be trained by an "anger management guru" in emotional intelligence, which takes just four hours (must not be some of the docs I know). Cut up in the class and see what happens.

GE’s Wisconsin-based diagnostic equipment unit will cut costs and jobs due to declining demand for big-ticket MRIs and CT scanners.

Everybody’s applauding (their words) Obama’s post-campaign, pre-inauguration HIT warblings. You may recall the same reaction back in 2004 when President Bush ("The Google") made his quickly forgotten Vanderbilt speech that claimed an unswerving commitment to technology-driven healthcare reform ("The president went to Vanderbilt and all I got was this CCHIT.")  Politicians get elected making rhetoric-filled promises, a tiny minority of which actually amount to anything, but then again, I’m a cynic with a long memory. I hope I’m wrong.

Interesting: a hospital in Thailand aims to become a "hospital without walls" in three to five years, using technology to deliver its services anywhere. Steps so far: a wireless network, electronic medical records, and patient TVs that allow doctors to use the EMR by inserting their ID card. Coming: home monitoring and telemedicine. That could be done by any number of institutions here, of course, except for one big roadblock: getting paid for it.

Pittsburgh has few jobs that don’t involve non-profits, but never underestimate the economic power of being a highly compensated healthcare middleman. Highmark Inc. is on a hiring tear, especially for techies. Experience in writing claims denial routines and indecipherable patient communication letters preferred (sarcasm mine).

DoD starts testing of Google Health and HealthVault.

I saw this headline ("Your mouth can signal your overall health") and wasn’t thinking about the gum condition it is actually about. I was instead picturing a tonsil-baring scream or curse-laden begging for Dilaudid, which isn’t usually a good sign, either.

Oakwood Healthcare Systems (MI) freezes hiring, postpones a hospital improvement project, and delays computer upgrades. It will get really interesting if the Big Three pink slips start flying, which should be the case if they have such a crappy business model that even government oversight ("Car Czar") is more innovative and nimble. Even Beaumont is throttling back.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

From Lauryn Hill: "Re: holiday gifts. You inspired me with one of your recent posts regarding a company that is donating money to a food shelf instead of having a holiday party. We have decided to donate money to a food shelf in honor of our clients who we would normally send gifts to at this time of year. We are sending the clients a letter letting them know of the donation. Not the same as a box from Godiva, but I think this year is exceptional." Godivas are great, but nothing beats food on the table. A couple of weeks, ago a reader commented that when companies cancel/scale back their holiday parties, it’s bound to hurt the local economy and those in the hospitality industry. I can’t disagree. However, I’ll never forget the first time I helped deliver food and holiday gifts to families many years ago. My life seemed pretty rosy after seeing the one-bedroom home shared by three generations. Grandpa was sleeping on a mattress in the living room and everyone had coats on. The only heat they had was coming from the stove’s gas burners, which were set to high. So thanks, Lauryn, for helping make a difference.

Here is an oldie but a goodie. If you’re a manager worried that budget cuts and trimming the holiday festivities will negatively affect morale, try handwriting a note of appreciation to staff. That advice comes from a Harvard Business School expert, no less.

A survey conducted by CHIME, NAHIT, and AHA Solutions finds that hospitals are delaying capital projects and cutting capital and operating budgets in order to cope with the financial crisis. Though overall hospital employment is still rising, one in four hospital CIOs and CFOs claim to have recently laid off workers and/or instituted a hiring freeze. Fifty-seven percent of the respondents also indicated they are deferring IT equipment purchases and 52% are lengthening time frames for HIT implementations. More than a third of CIOs are reducing spending on outsourced IT services.

Wen Chyan, a 17-year-old Texas high school student, creates a polymer that could help prevent hospital infections. It can be used on catheters, breathing tubes, and other medical devices. His feat earned him a $100,000 college scholarship as part of the national Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. What does one invent to follow that up?

The Arkansas nurse who stole accessed and disclosed a patient’s health information for personal gain is sentenced to two years probation and 100 hours of community service. The US District judge who sentenced Smith recommended that she spend some of her community service hours educating others on the consequences of violating HIPAA. Hey – maybe she’ll do a column for HIStalk!

The University of Oklahoma College of Nursing contracts with Medsphere for the OpenVista EHR solution, including implementation and support. Medsphere offers a discount as part of its Academic Incubator program, designed to help educate students in nursing and medical schools about HIT and clinical informatics.

The 105-physician Sadler Clinic (TX) selects NextGen for its EHR, enterprise practice management, patient portal, and image control solutions.

Sunquest Information Systems receives FDA clearance for its Sunquest Transfusion Manager.

Kaiser Permanente is ordered to pay a former radiologist $3.9 million for forcing him to resign after he tried to improve hospital standards. He quit after his supervisor accused him of racism and sexually harassing behavior toward a male technologist.

E-mail Inga.

Being John Glaser 12/9/08

Last week we held a meeting of the Partners External Integration Committee.

Partners has and is pursuing a wide array of clinical affiliations with other providers in its region. These providers include other academic medical centers, community hospitals, physician practices, health centers, and university clinics. Sometimes these affiliations focus on a specific area, e.g., oncology, and sometimes they are broad, reflecting the mixture of patients and conditions that are seen.

The systems support being requested by these affiliations is all over the map. Merged networks and shared desktops. Access to the other’s e-mail and phone directories. Structured clinical data being transmitted from one system to the other. PDF-like summaries being sent for particular events. Share medical logic that informs one organization when something happens (or doesn’t happen) at another organization. Reports of affiliation activity. Whole scale movement of an application from one organization into the other.

I am a big believer in the national agenda and activities that are focused on advancing interoperability. And I spend a non-trivial amount of my copious free time helping to further those initiatives.

But when I look at the external integration challenges we are facing and I compare that to the national agenda, I think it’s a lot more complex and messier out here in the wilds of Boston than moving structured test results into an electronic health record, as important as that movement is.

And the diversity of integration approaches (and each of these affiliations has their unique combination of integration needs) is compounded by the need to create governance structures for each affiliation that deal with issues such as budget, who is responsible for what pieces of the integration, policies for re-use of data, and mechanisms to enforce the policies, e.g., privacy, of one organization over the staff of the other.

We (Partners) will work our way through these issues. That’s the role of the External Integration Committee. But I suspect that other organizations are also working their way through these issues. It’s probably not a bad idea to augment the national conversation to include conversations that center on the messy reality of very diverse IT approaches to supporting clinical relationships (and patients) between multiple organizations.

This will give me more opportunities to avoid real work at Partners and visit the very fine city of Washington DC.

John Glaser is vice president and CIO at Partners HealthCare System. He describes himself as an "irregular regular contributor" to HIStalk.

Monday Morning Update 12/8/08

From Bucky DeVol: "Re: ONCHIT. The Halamka rumors are not true. He might be talking to Daschle’s people, but he’s not going to DC." He’s leading in the poll to your right, although Dan Nigrin has been written in three times (he swears someone is doing that as a joke – Inga asked him about it from an earlier reader’s comment). Other write-in nominees include Jeannie "Bill becomes a Law" Patterson (sic), Charlie McCall, and Justen Deal. You people are fun.

From Steve-O: "Re: stories you cover. How do you decide what goes in HIStalk?" I include whatever interests me as someone working in hospital IT every day, which hopefully also interests you as well. Grade me: over the past month, what useful information did you get from what sources? I pick what you can use, summarize ruthlessly, get it to you fast, and encourage reader feedback to add value. I also go after stuff that nobody else is talking about and filter out the 99% of BS "news" that nobody cares about. You’re the ultimate judge, though, since the only person I know I please 100% of the time is me.

New to your right: I installed the Google Friend Connect social networking app. It looks interesting, especially as they roll out new widgets. Give it a try if you like. 

The Charlie McCall nominee got me going, so I found this book that has his endorsement from him back in his pre-HBOC CompuServe days: "To survive and succeed in a decade of rapidly changing technologies and increasing global competition for service companies, we must strive to ‘change the rules of the game.’" Your punchline is as good as mine.

Listening: Flyleaf, sweet chick rocker warbling with a positive message (check the video of their World Vision trip to Rwanda and the bio of the lead singer). Very nice.

Carondelet St. Mary’s (AZ) goes live on Amelior EDTracker integrated with ultrasound asset tracking from Sonitor Technologies.

HSW International acquires 14-employee DailyStrength in what TechCrunch calls a "mercy acquisition". It’s one of many Rounded Arial sites that hoped to become the MySpace for health with a mixture of good intentions and profit motive, although it seems deceiving to run a VC-funded dot-com under a .org address.

I mentioned Gartner’s EMR report for the VA and DoD that said only Epic and Cerner could meet their needs. If someone has a copy of that report, please send it my way. It’s important: vendors and DoD are pushing for proprietary vendor solutions, while the VA’s unparalleled success with open source, standards-based VistA makes it wary of that approach (but the VA, apparently, is badly outnumbered). Open source is already a mere footnote to the hospital systems business and losing its VA poster child makes it irrelevant, unfortunately, even though non-adopters always cite cost as the main reason they stick with manila folders.

Tim Clover, CEO of T+ Medical, added a comment to the mention here about discontinuation its trial by the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital for diabetes care, saying my mention was inaccurate. Which it was, at least through omission: I referenced the use of the product in general and later noted a story saying the hospital had stopped using it, but I didn’t mention that it’s being successfully used by a several others. He should have just e-mailed me, but I’ll overlook that by approving his comment that plugs the product.

Mark Tepping, CIO of Bridgeport Hospital and a 35-year member of HIMSS, tells me he’s retiring. Food for thought: his wife, a former neuro nurse, said the spouses of patients often expressed regret at waiting too long to do all the things they planned together, so he’s not making that mistake. He’ll send over an e-mail address for anyone who wants to get in touch.

 
Original Version – Google Cache

 
Current Version – Site

Curious: above are the original (from Google’s cache) and current (from the HIMSS site) versions of the HIMSS press release referring to the organization (for the first time ever, as far as I can tell) as a trade association. That troublesome phrase has been quietly expunged. I guess we still don’t know if it is or not.

We’ll be introducing some guest writers and some fun "HIT Moment With …" subjects shortly in our never-ending effort to make HIStalk more useful. It will be time for the HISsies and HIMSS-related activity before you know it! If you want to get involved in some way or have suggestions, shoot me an e-mail (although remember I work a zillion hours a day between my job and HIStalk, so I’m always in catch-up mode).

USP gets out of the medication error reporting business, sending MedMarx off to Quantros and MERP to ISMP (that’s a lot of acronyms, but if you don’t know what they mean, the story won’t interest you anyway).

Housekeeping: plunk your e-mail in the Subscribe to Updates box to your right to help knock my server offline as it tries to simultaneously deliver e-mail updates to 3,302 people at once. Make it even worse by clicking on the Email This to a Friend graphic right below it to tell a few pals about HIStalk. The Google-powered Search function roots through 5.5 years and many millions of words of HIStalk to find whatever interests you (yourself, your company, or your hated rival). Click the crude Report a Rumor to Mr. HIStalk graphic to send me confidential info anonymously.

Microsoft convenes a healthcare provider symposium in Redmond, talking up its "partner ecosystem." I’m not sure that touting a partner’s Visio add-in for analyzing patient flow shows a lot of innovation and leadership, but I wasn’t at the meeting.

An AHRQ-funded article in Annals of Emergency Medicine doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Respondents from 65 hospitals reported insufficient space, too many patients to care for properly, and inadequate access to computers and electronic medical records (I can only see the summary since I don’t subscribe).

Hospital layoffs: Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center (WA), Carlisle Regional Medical Center (PA), University of Toledo Medical Center (OH).

Nurses at Lawrence Memorial Hospital (MA) are doing a study to see if music calms patients waiting for endoscopies. They’re using Internet streaming radio from Pandora to choose music that the patient likes instead of the usual Muzak. I suggest HIStalk Radio, although patients might clench up from some of the hardcore tunes (playing now: Union Carbide Productions, Noir Desir, and the Blue Stingrays).

Civilians treated at the Yokota Air Base hospital in Japan weren’t billed because the Coding Compliance Editor software wasn’t set to send bills without human intervention.

London hospitals want NHS to compensate them for unplanned legacy system maintenance needed because NPfIT is years behind.

Nuance announces Q4 results: revenue up 41%, EPS $0.09 vs. -$0.02. Nice. A conference call comment supports what I’ve been saying about hospitals insisting on non-capital ways of buying systems (or, more precisely, expected system benefits): "We are finding customers, even some of our larger hospital customers, who express preference for a subscription pricing or a transaction-based pricing, a form of leasing in effect, rather than an upfront capital payment. As we said in the prepared comments, we benefit from that over time. It’s economically superior to us over time but it does have a different revenue stream over the course of this year." Everybody benefits except those companies on too shaky financial ground to make the transition to stretched-out payments, so subscription pricing will definitely be used by big vendors to outsell smaller ones whose products may be superior. You have been warned.

Vendor Deals and Announcements

• CPSI announces its 100^th sale of its PACS solution ImageLink.
• Deb Bradley is D2Hawkeye’s new VP, Chief Client Solution Executive. Bradley has spent the last 13 years at Trizetto, serving as VP of Product Management, VP of Sales Support, and Director of Care Management roles.
• Maxell Medical Imaging (NY) selects Aspyra’s Access RAD RIS/PACS solution.
• Phoenix-based DiCOM grid, Inc. announces that Michael V. Wall is its new CEO. Wall previous worked for Intel, Cray Research, and IBM.
• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia contracts with Acuo Technologies for a new archiving solution that will become the basis of CHOP’s medical imaging management platform.
• gMed releases (warning: PDF) a gastro-specific EMR named gGastro.
• Nuance reveals a new on-demand solution named Veriphy 3.0, designed to help healthcare provider organizations communicate test results. Nuance also announces it has integrated its RadWhere radiology application with DeJarnette Research System’s PACSware Intelligent Router product.
• Mediware’s blood and medication management systems will be installed across 40 South African hospitals as part of an agreement with the Provincial Government of the Western Cape.
• Associated Cardiovascular Associates (NJ) picks Sage Software Healthcare’s Intergy EHR/PM solution for its 38 doctor practice.
• VMware is now successfully deployed at St. Vicent Catholic Medical Centers of New York.
• Emdeon premieres a new US Healthcare Efficiency Index to monitor healthcare business efficiency as the industry moves away from paper. Phase 1 of the Index estimates the total annual savings potential to be nearly $30 billion for medical claims-related transactions. The Index also suggests that the direct deposit of medical payments could provide an $11 billion annual savings.
• Consulting firm HighPoint Solutions adds a new Quality and Compliance practice to address the increased regulatory requirements and related information technology issues in the life sciences industry.
• Eric Silfen, MD is named the new (and first) chief medical officer and VP of Philips Healthcare. Silfen was previously in the department of biomedical informatics research at Philips Research North America, and also spent time working for HCA.
• Orion Health’s Rhapsody integration engine will be employed for the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. Rhapsody will link healthcare information across 18 remote Alaska Native communities.
• The Hawaii Medical Service Association is launching a new online care service that will connect patients and physicians via the Internet or telephone. The cost of a visit will be $10 for members or $45 for nonmembers.
• Baptist Health (AR) claims to have realized over $1 million in savings since implementing Thomson Reuters’ Clinical Xpert CareFocus. The CareFocus solution has improved pharmacist efficiency and increased documented clinical interventions by about 30%.
• The state of New Jersey is bailing out six financially distressed NJ hospitals where access to health care services is threatened. A total of $44 million will be distributed to provide care for the uninsured and low-income residents. About half of the money went to Jersey City Medical Center.
• MedCurrent Corporation introduces a new Web-based, real-time insurance eligibility verification application that is being targeted to radiology practices. Currently the MedCurrent Verify program will connect with over 350 insurers.
• Medical Imaging Northwest (WA) is teaming up with Compressus to implement a single enterprise-wide worklist solution that integrates digital imaging and data management systems at its multiple sites.

E-mail me.

News 12/5/08

From Cheryl: "Re: low-cost IT projects. I have been starving to hear stories like these! Leonard and Larry shared common problems, not hospital-specific issues. I am always on the lookout for how others are doing things better, especially solutions that can become best practices. To discover how these guys solved solved problems with easy-to-implement, cost effective solutions makes my little heart sing. Thanks for a truly valuable read! I want more! Cheers to Leonard and Larry. My new BFFs." If you, too, want to be Cheryl’s BFF (and who doesn’t?) then e-mail me your own small-project success stories. We may focus on big-ticket, multi-year endeavors most of the time, but somebody’s job could be saved by executing a quick and dirty project whose idea came from here, so give it up.

From Barney Chavous: "Re: BlackBerry improvement project. Can you provide contact information for Leonard Kravitz?" Ordinarily, no — I always provide a fake name unless someone asks specifically that I run their real name. In this case, Leonard (Lenny Kravitz, get it?) says it’s OK since a couple of folks asked: he’s Chris O’Connor, MD, FRCPC, Director of Medical Informatics, Trillium Health Centre, Mississauga, Ontario. He’s also involved with Open Source Order Sets, a project to roll out evidence-based content in Canada shared among contributors (great idea). You can e-mail him there. I found a BlackBerry writeup about the project he mentioned, which included his picture above. They did a Q&A and I liked this from him (it’s from 2006): "It is now remarkable to me, that in 2006, people are still using receive-only numeric pagers. It is the worst possible communication tool one can use, and yet it is the norm in medicine today. I still remember Pager Liberation Day: the day I released my pager and it sailed down to the bottom of the garbage pail and I never saw it again. That was fantastic and I have never looked back."

From OK in UK: "Re: iSoft. Any idea what happened to Paul Richards?" Link. Richards is replaced as iSoft’s managing director of the UK and Ireland by Adrian Stevens of Agfa. I don’t know where he went.

From Jade East: "Re: e-prescribing bonus. How did you guys come up with a maximum incentive of $1,600 per year? I cannot find anything that shows a capped amount." We actually said "average," not "maximum." That number has been reported in several articles, including the one we referenced that quoted a CMS administrator directly.

From Katrina Waves: "Re: insurance requiring that providers pay for claims appeals. Do you know of any documentation to substantiate this?" The reader did not provide a link, but being an intrepid Internet sleuth, I came up with this BCBS of NC document (warning: PDF – relevant part above). Want to know why they’re doing it? Because they can. 

From H.I. McDonough: "Re: newsletter editorial. That was a great column. I wonder if anybody got it?" I wrote a particularly manic guest editorial this week for Inside Healthcare Computing called Camping Out for a Cerner Black Friday Door-Buster Special: Mr. HIStalk’s Plan to Stimulate the HIT Economy By Encouraging Unrestrained Holiday Season Greed, in which I advocated an HIT Black Friday sale (with major sarcasm). Above is an amuse-bouche clearly illlustrating my run-on sentence enthusiasm. Eat my literary dust, Pliny the Elder.

I have to learn to quit shooting off my mouth now that I have more readers. A nice person from Vanderbilt (you will be meeting him soon in "An HIT Moment with …") apologized that their article about moving from an HIT-rich environment to the technological boondocks seemed smug (my word). A good point: the article actually argued that the high-tech hospital has the responsibility to teach its trainees to work with more common low-tech systems like paper charts. I asked him to be our guest in a mini-interview and he’s up for it, so stay tuned. That’s pretty cool, especially instead of apologizing (a sly move!) he could have ripped me a new one for my cheekiness, although if he reads here, he’s probably used to that.

I ran a rumor of a possible ONCHIT candidate, so now you get a chance to influence Tom Daschle’s decision (I’m sure he reads HIStalk religiously and appreciates the counsel). A new reader-suggested poll to your right asks who should follow Brailer and Kolodner in the government’s big HIT chair. Vote for one or write in your own choice since that’s what democracy is all about.

Dann, the keeper of the HIStalk Fan Club on LinkedIn, tells me that over 400 folks have signed up. I see several familiar names and faces as I scroll through the list, so hello to everybody there. LinkedIn is doing some cool things, providing a discussion forum within groups and offering tie-ins to other apps (I’ve added the HIStalk RSS to my profile so you can see story excerpts right from there). I was also trying out a cool UK-based collaboration / social networking app called Huddle when I noticed that it, too, can be connected into LinkedIn as a widget. I was thinking about doing some kind of private workspace for groups (fan club members, CIOs, sponsors – obviously I’m looking for an excuse to play around and find a problem for the Huddle solution since it looks like fun). As always, Inga and I will approve all connection requests since LinkedIn is now a competitive sport, much like getting your high school yearbook signed by the cool kids or at least bunches of the not-so-cool ones. I see some of the magazines have started their own fan clubs (losers!) but I’m pleased that HIStalk’s did it on their own (we’re kind of a self-starting crowd). Thanks to everyone involved, especially Dann.

This is cool: Josh Nesbit (that’s him above on the right), a Stanford student of international health and bioethics, sets up a telemedicine-like project for a hospital in Malawi, where Internet connectivity and even electricity is uncommon. He used a freeware SMS messaging application to connect the hospital with volunteer health workers, often poverty-stricken locals themselves, who were given prepaid cell phones to exchange information with the hospital. He’s hoping to add solar panel charging for the phones and the ability to send images. Other researchers are porting the application to the Google Android mobile platform, which would eliminate the cost of the laptop. His blog (click his name above) has specific details about the types of messages being sent and the impact on patients. Bravo.

Speaking of texting: a physician volunteer in the Congo performs a life-saving arm amputation on a 16-year-old while following text message instructions sent to him by a London colleague.

Booz Allen has declared the need for the VA to modernize it and work with DoD on common systems, according to a report uncovered by Nextgov. Interesting: Gartner looked at EMR systems and found that only those from Cerner and Epic would meet their requirements. The price tag (read carefully because you’re the one paying): $1.4 to $5.2 billion over six to 17 years.

The State of New York is requiring that new hospital clinical systems connect to the Statewide Health Information Network, meaning that Mount Sinai has to run its application to spend $34 million on Epic by that group next week.

Florida Hospital (FL, duh) will use RFID to track implantable medical devices.

Quinnipiac University researchers will study whether the use of integrated sensors in the Healthsense eNeighbor system (movement detection, door sensors, bed and toilet sensors) reduces hospitalization and improves independence.

St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital (IN) will use per review software from startup Acesis.

Some healthcare IT folks (unnamed) met with Amazon and other vendors at Harvard Medical School this week to talk about cloud computing.

We already told you this on August 1, but Perot Systems officially announces that it will roll out VistA to two hospitals and a clinic in Jordan.

Eleven children with cancer in South Australia were overdosed on etoposide due to a computer error that first arose in January 2005 and was just now discovered. The kids are all OK.

A UK hospital cancels blood tests this week due to computer problems from the Conficker worm, which exploits a Microsoft server service vulnerability.

Cleveland Clinic has been panned hard in the past for its doctors (starting with its CEO) making big bucks from vendors whose products they use on patients. They aren’t saying that practice will stop, but its online physician roster will list each doctor’s financial disclosures (only companies, not amounts, but they claim they’ll add that later, maybe). The CEO’s disclosures are above. Every vendor should do what a couple of drug companies started: post every payment they make to doctors online. If it’s such an above-board practice, surely those docs won’t mind everybody knowing.

Scottish patients, including some minor celebrities, get a letter from a hospital advising them that a doctor may have inappropriately looked at their electronic medical records. The police are involved.

Detroit’s major employers are begging for handouts and threatening to take the economy down with them (much of that due to out-of-control healthcare costs), but Henry Ford’s suburban hospital — all $360 million of it — will offer walking trails and cooking lessons when finished. The CEO has zero healthcare experience, having worked at Ritz-Carlton. It’s located safely away from downtown, out where private insurance grows tall. As a hospital marketing VP I used to know always said, "We serve all, but market to few."

An interesting study: the performance of radiologists seems to improve if they’re given a photo of the patient along with the pics of their innards. They put the pictures right into the PACS.

SunTrust announces its eligibility and claims system for physician offices and hospitals.

Ohio State University’s medical school will give every student an iPod touch loaded with reference materials.

Kaiser Permanente gets a writeup for its Oakland, CA innovation center, which evaluates healthcare technology offerings from Intel, Motion, and others. The only person quoted is a doctor, but hopefully they have other kinds of professionals doing the evaluations as well.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

I don’t know much about the world of brokering domain names, but it sounds like if you are savvy and able to secure a name before anyone else thinks it’s a great idea, the business could be profitable. HealthCareSolutions.com just sold for $55,000 and HIPAA.com went for $23,500. Curiously, www.inga.com seems to be already taken.

Glen and Trish Tullman donate $1 million to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to accelerate the development of an artificial pancreas. Their son and niece both have Type 1 diabetes. They made a similar donation to the organization in 2006.

AT&T announces plans to cut about 12,000 jobs, which represents about 4% of the company’s total workforce. Capital expenditures for 2009 will also be reduced from the 2008 levels. The company’s wireless, video, and broadband business, however, will continue to add clients to meet growing demand.

A lawsuit is filed on behalf of the Texas Faculty Association, asking that the UT System’s decision to approve massive UTMB layoffs be declared void. The lawsuit claims the decision to lay off 3,800 people violated the Texas Open Meeting Acts because the regents conducted the discussions behind closed doors. The lawsuit also questions why the UT regents purchased only $100 million worth of flood insurance and why the UT System can’t re-allocate surplus funds to prevent the layoffs.

InteGreat signs a 14-year ASP agreement with the West Virginia HealthCare Alliance to provide an EMR for its 30 network physicians.

Medical transcription provider MedQuist will pay $6.6 million to settle whistle-blower lawsuits, accused of knowingly overbilling federal clients like the VA and DOD.

Officials with the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum claim that recent hurricanes have hampered efforts to recruit primary care physicians for a federally funded EHR demonstration project. The project has the potential to bring the state $29 million for physician practices to defray EHR costs. During the first four weeks of the application process, only 50 doctors came forward.

A survey of healthcare workers at 102 nonprofit hospitals finds that 67% of the respondents believe there is a link between disruptive physician behavior and medical mistakes. Eighteen claimed they knew of a mistake that occurred because of an obnoxious doctor. In addition, the non-profit Institute for Safe Medication Practices found that 40% of hospital staff members claimed to have been so intimidated by a doctor that they did not share their concerns about orders for medication that appeared to be incorrect. As a result, 7 percent said they contributed to a medication error.

WebMD repurchases 640,930 shares of its common stock for $12.8 million.

Sage announces its fiscal year earnings, reporting a 12% increase in revenues and a 6% increase in organic revenue growth — excluding the healthcare division, which saw an 11% revenue decline. When the healthcare’s group results were included, organic revenue growth was only 3%. On the bright side, the company says the North American management team is now in place and driving operational efficiencies.

RSNA names Gary J. Becker, MD its new president. Becker is a professor of vascular and interventional radiology at the University of AZ college of medicine.

E-mail Inga.

News 12/3/08

From Former Siemens Employee: "Re: CEO. Healthcare CEO abruptly resigned last Friday AM. Announced at RSNA yesterday." Link. Jim Reid-Anderson lasted only seven months to the day, having replaced Erich Reinhardt, who resigned April 30 after new compliance issues broadened the apparent scope of the company’s multi-billion dollar bribery problems.

From The PACS Designer: "Re: open source for virtualization. The virtualization space has been supported by proprietary software from mainly IBM and VMware. Now, open source Linux developers have added a Kernel Virtual Machine or KVM to compete in the virtual marketplace. HIStalk sponsor Red Hat has added KVM to their version of Linux. Michael Ferris, Red Hat’s director of product strategy, had this to say in an InformationWeek article: ‘adding KVM to Red Hat Enterprise Linux will reach new customers who might not otherwise have considered Red Hat as their virtualization vendor.’" Link.

Listening: the new reissue of Murmur, the debut album of R.E.M. from 1983. I keep forgetting how much I like them. So much so that went to this year’s Accelerate and it sounds fine, too. Thinking man’s (or woman’s) alt-rock. I’m air-drumming and making intense-looking facial gestures as I play Cuyahoga from Life’s Rich Pageant, pretending to be Keith Moon except with zero rhythmicity.

Tomorrow is Readers Write day, so it’s not to late to send me over something.

Health Level Seven and The Health Story Project announce an implementation guide for making information from narrative radiology reports available to EMRs.

Hospitalist application vendor Ingenious Med brings on Hart Williford as CEO. He was previously with Memorial Health of Savannah.

Jobs: Regional Sales Director, VP Sales, Epic Security Consultant.

A reader sent over an e-prescribing article featuring Glen Tullman of Allscripts from Ode Magazine, whose self-described audience is "intelligent optimists."

Someone passed along a juicy but totally unsubstantiated rumor about Rob Kolodner’s potential replacement at ONCHIT (it’s a political appointee job, as you probably know). The job seeker being speculated is a Man in Black (no, not Johnny Cash). It would be a big pay cut, but a giant ego boost for the Harmonizer. Sure, it’s probably totally off the wall, but fun.

New York Presbyterian Hospital suspends an employee for failing to report that NFL star and bonehead (was that redundant?) Plaxico Burress sought treatment after shooting himself in the leg while carrying an illegal weapon in a crowded nightclub. The hospital itself is also under investigation for failing to report the shooting to police. Mayor Bloomberg makes it clear he wants Burress behind bars since there’s an automatic 3 1/2 year penalty for illegally carrying a loaded gun. "It’s pretty hard to argue the guy didn’t have a gun and it wasn’t loaded. You’ve got bullet holes in and out to show that it was there." He also said, "It’s a chargeable offense, and I think that the district attorney should certainly go after the management of this hospital." Burress just signed a five-year, $35 million contract in September, but the Giants realized he was a flake and made most of the money contingent on his nearly non-existent good behavior.

I’ve been saying all along that hospitals are struggling with reduced occupancy, investment losses, and uncompensated care, all sure to hit IT. The feel-good publications pretend it’s business as usual, but here’s the clincher if you needed one: 30,000-employee Intermountain Healthcare stops its employee 401K matching for at least a year and scales back its holiday parties. Hospitals can save money in many ways (shouldn’t the lipsticked Centricity be doing that for them?) so I would have to suspect that this is a way to create voluntary attrition.

Nebraska Medical Center signs for McKesson Horizon PACS.

Intellect Resources shared the results (warning: PDF) of its survey on the economy’s impact on healthcare IT. Lots of companies are reducing headcount or freezing hiring as we’ve been saying. In the mean time, IR has some pretty sweet-sounding positions open.

A 32-year former employee of UCLA Medical Center pleads guilty to selling Farrah Fawcett’s medical records to the National Enquirer. Farrah should be suing the Enquirer if you ask me. You have to go after demand, not supply.

Snelling Executive Search, which did the "101 Healthcare IT Marketing Ideas" booklet with Chuck Christian that I mentioned in March, will be doing a HIMSS presentation in Chicago about CIO job changes, voluntary and otherwise. Contact VP Steve Bennett if you’d be willing to chat about the topic from experience (or if you’d like a free copy of the booklet, which I have – it’s great). They’re also turning the IT marketing booklet into a full-fledged book that HIMSS will publish, so if you have ideas or case studies, Steve’s your guy there, too.

Results of a new Deloitte survey show that the CIO role is not well defined, nobody knows what they’re supposed to be doing, and CIOs themselves are equally confused. The conclusion is that there’s no one-size-fits-all CIO and their ideal function is to make IT so innate to business process that their job becomes obsolete, freeing them up to move on to other senior management roles.

I’m still marveling that HIMSS called itself a "trade association" of 350 corporations in a press release, apparently for the first time. At least that’s an honest explanation for all the lobbying it does (I admit I never got Advocacy Day – why would provider people like me march on Washington to bug low-ranking political aides to spend more taxpayer dollars on healthcare IT?) As I always say, it’s Ladies Drink Free: we ladies (members) get liquored up for nearly nothing while the men (vendors) pay full price just to be around in our potential moment of weakness. I like both providers and vendors, but being represented by the same group just seems strange, especially if you’re watching from the sidelines as a patient (would you want your doctor joining the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and chumming up with drug companies for their marketing and lobbying work?)

Cincinnati Children’s chooses AMICAS PACS.

The Hartford business paper highlights (their photo above) bed management software vendor Premise, now running in five of the country’s eight top hospitals listed in US News & World Report.

I forgot to extend my usual best wishes to those heading off to RSNA (is it a trade association?) I hope your travels were pleasant and the subfreezing weather is gone by April when the rest of us get there to enjoy our winter flashback. I see O’Hare got buried in snow Sunday and flights were messed up all over the country as a result (the bad news: it’s supposed to snow every day with highs Thursday and Friday of 24 and 25, respectively. That’s Fahrenheit, unfortunately).

Speaking of Chicago, I ran across this by accident: Bistro HIMSS, a chance to wildly overpay for union-produced concession food right on the McCormick Place show floor. Actually, $23 a head to keep prospects captive in the hall isn’t bad, so make your reservations now. Maybe I’ll buy an HIStalk table and hold court.

Payer software vendor Medecision names Scott Storrer, formerly of Cardinal Health, as president/COO and James Adamek as SVP of sales.

Who says doctors can’t be skilled at using a computer? This British surgeon is accused by six female patients of fondling their breasts, one of whom claimed he did so while working the computer with the other hand and breathing heavily all the while.

Glyn Hayes, a British doctor and "undisputed elder statement of primary care informatics" is named an Honorary Fellow of the British Computer Society.

The Montgomery paper writes a nice article on the DoD-VA integration project, describing a real-life example of its use in a veteran’s treatment.

Vanderbilt rather smugly announces the results of their survey that describes the tragic disappointment and disillusionment doctors experience when they leave the technical nirvana of Vandy ("Health Information Technology-Rich Training Environment") and have to deal with "less modern facilities," i.e. the non-Vandy, non-Ivory Tower real world. I try to like them, but they make it so hard. It doesn’t matter since they’re obviously in love with the mirror.

Hospital layoffs: Portsmouth Regional Hospital (8 employees); Oregon Health & Science University (coming soon); Fairfield Medical Center (20-25 employees); Pinnacle Hospital (21 employees). if yours hasn’t, it will.

Interesting: a UK hospital uses BlackBerry devices to alert nurses when recurring patients are admitted, bringing nurses together who know the patient’s background. Orion Health helped develop it. It decreased length of stay: lung cancer patients from eight to six, lower GI from nine and a half to five. It’s also being used for patients with MRSA or C.diff.

Nuance announces Veriphy 3.0 for verified notification of critical lab results.

iSOFT wins a big pharmacy management system contract with Western Australian Department of Health.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

Red Hat donates cash for 800,000 meals this holiday season rather than host a holiday bash for employees. In addition, the employees are running canned food drives and collected coats for the needy. Well done.

SCI Solutions closes its fiscal year with 43 new clients across 63 hospitals, bringing its customer total to 300.

Virtual Radiologic also reaches a customer milestone with the recent live of its 1000th medical facility. I also see that Virtual Radiologic is now partnering with Brazil teleradiology provider Pro-Laudo.

Poudre Valley Health System (CO) is named the 2008 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winner in healthcare, based on high scores in clinical quality while effectively controlling costs (in the 99th percentile); patient loyalty (in the top 1% in the US); and employee satisfaction (top 3%, plus top 1% for physicians). Poudre Valley was also named the top hospital for nursing quality by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Pretty darned impressive.

Israel’s Clarit Health Services commits $25 million for Carestream Health’s RIS/PACS solution.

Sentillion appoints Colin Wicks as its UK Regional Sales Manager. He previously worked for ICL (now Fujitsu Systems) as well as various identity and access management VARs.

Here’s a pretty disappointing statistic: only 2% of valid US prescriptions are being sent electronically to pharmacies. Will Medicare’s upcoming 2% bonus program (an average of $1,600/year per doctor) make a significant impact, or will most doctors still resist?

An Archives of Internal Medicine study indicates that physicians with EHRs pay less for malpractice settlements.

Fujifilm Medical Systems acquires its first proprietary RIS system with its purchase of Empiric Systems.

Ten percent of physicians who vaccinate privately insured children may discontinue that service because they lose money on it.

Outpatient facilities are not adopting PACS as fast at inpatient facilities, according to a new KLAS report. In addition, community-based hospitals have lower adoption rates than larger independent or IDN hospitals. Lack of finances seems to be the primary barrier.

Christmas is just three weeks away (wow!) and HIMSS a mere 17 weeks (it seems like we were just in Orlando). We already have nine companies lined up for HIStech Reports, but still have a few openings for companies that want us to do an in-depth executive interview. You can e-mail me.

I am not sure if these two announcements are related, but, Streamline Health Solutions names (warning: PDF) an interim CFO, then two days later says its Q3 results will be delayed “to provide additional time for the completion of necessary audit work and to finalize the results.” Donald Vick Jr. was named interim CFO to replace Paul Bridge, Jr., who resigned last month after learning his employment contract would not be renewed. Streamline’s financials will be revealed December 15th.

I feel kind of bad about this story, but in a twisted way it makes me feel marginally better about my 401K’s declining value. In August, Nuance offered speech recognition software vendor Zi Corporation an $.80/share buyout. Zi rejected the bid, claiming the offer was too low. The stock price at that time was about $.70/share. Like the rest of the market, Zi’s stock price has plummeted and today closed at $.34/share. Nuance has made a new offer, offering an all-cash deal equal to about half the original bid. Zi’s board of directors must decide this month whether to accept or reject the deal.

I was a little late getting my news to Mr. H tonight, in part because a friend of mine made me take a quick ride on his vintage Vespa. I feel incredibly hip.

E-mail Inga.

Monday Morning Update 12/1/08

From Jane Grierson: "Re: Whitwell Middle School’s paper clip site. This noteworthy school project has been in existence for a few years. However, the recent magnanimous contributions of MEDSEEK, a healthcare IT company with (as far as I know) little to no ties to public schools, etc., yet great Web products, deserves the biggest THANK YOU at this most appropriate time of year. If Peter Kuhn (last I heard, President) and Jay Drake (last I heard, CEO), representing all MEDSEEK staff, are still around — or whomever — the 11 million named and nameless souls will not be forgotten." Link to the school’s Children’s Holocaust Memorial site (the paper clip connection: they were invented by Norwegians and worn by them in national unity to protest Nazism in World War II, for which occupying Nazi forces would sometimes arrest them). The comment above comes from someone in the industry (phony name substituted by me) who isn’t from MEDSEEK.

From Matt Montini: "Re: insurance companies charging providers for appeals. This example is one of many that makes it clear that this nation does NOT need ‘healthcare reform.’ What it badly needs is ‘healthcare insurance / reimbursement / payment (or whatever synonym one wants to use) reform.’ By correcting the terminology, only then will we be able to change a hideous, broken system that is the root of all access problems, transparency issues, the un-insured, the under-insured, etc."

From Billy Kilmer: "Re: IT initiatives. I really liked the article about IT initiatives under $25,000. How about a request for the ONE coolest hospital gadget/process that is REALLY improving care from the patient’s point of view? And everybody’s best IT-implemented idea that made the patient experience better?" Great idea. Let’s hear from the hospital IT people (just e-mail me). I’ll keep the responses anonymous unless told otherwise since I know that worries people.

Did you have a good holiday? Hope so.

Listening: The Distillers, melodic and creative punk with a quite talented and pretty but foul-mouthed female lead singer. I’m also listening to AC/DC, but only indirectly since it is apparently an NCAA requirement that every college football game have gratuitous, testosterone-eliciting background music in a fixed ratio of 80% AC/DC to 20% Metallica.

Fujitsu Siemens launches its ESPRIMO MA tablet PC for healthcare, based on the Intel Mobile Clinical Assistant spec. In less rosy news, Siemens is selling its 50% stake in the company to Fujitsu for $567 million and it’s cutting 700 jobs in Germany due to poor market conditions.

Charge master software vendor Craneware is named Scottish software company of the year.

A bizarre use of technology: a rifle’s scope attached to a video monitor lets the spotter of a blind hunter direct his gun so he can kill animals for sport.

St. John’s Hospital (IL) will go live on MEDITECH Monday, an event written up in the local newspaper. It noted that early cost estimates were $20 to $30 million, which seems like a lot for a one-hospital MEDITECH implementation other than it’s 734 beds, which would surely be one of the biggest MEDITECH hospitals.

Another vendor "good news" item: MedVentive just finished a Thanksgiving drive for the local food bank. The company says it also tripled its sales force and launched two new products.

Inga says she was having a bad day when she mentioned the "good news" thing and enjoyed mentioning a couple of items, but please don’t send more. It was fun when CEOs were writing, but now the PR people have been mobilized just to get their companies mentioned.

Raymond James is doing a two-minute survey on healthcare IT spending for 2009. You can participate here.

Students at Taiwan’s Ming Chuan University develop a prize-winning hospital software package that includes a real-time doctor advice system, patient monitoring, and a staff locating system.

Cerner opens an office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Online health and wellness vendor Aperture Health announces that Kevin Moley has joined its board. He’s a former HHS deputy secretary and US ambassador as well as former CEO of Integrated Medical Systems. The company’s business model is to run targeted ads with health information and share the revenue with members.

George Washington University Hospital increases employee satisfaction with hospital communication by 33% by using solutions from Netpresenter: "broadcasting" to individual PCs via interactive PC screensavers, digital signage, and emergency alerting.

A Microsoft study finds that lay people screwing around on the Web trying to self-diagnose often mistake their common symptoms for rare diseases, a situation the authors call "cyberchondria."

The Nashville paper writes up the use of RFID-based patient tracking system systems in hospitals, not really saying anything new, but providing a glossy and short overview for lay people.

Mike Webb, 55, IT director at Central Peninsula General Hospital (AK), was killed on the job Wednesday by a distraught former employee. A PACS administrator who was fired Tuesday returned Wednesday morning with a semi-automatic rifle and opened fire on his co-supervisors, Webb and hospital radiology director Margaret Stroup, who was critically injured. Webb had been on the job less than a year, moving to Alaska from Southern Tennessee Medical Center. The suspect, Joseph Marchetti, formerly managed cardiac databases at Nebraska Medical Center. He was shot dead on the scene by Alaska state troopers when he fired on them. Condolences.

An interesting healthcare information technology advocate: IntraHealth International, a Chapel Hill, NC non-profit that works with software developers in Africa to deploy open source healthcare applications to African practitioners (among its other healthcare projects in developing countries). It apparently has a subsidiary site for IntraHealth Informatics and is looking for volunteer designers, developers, and documenters.

Four University of South Florida physicians want an investigation into the firing of a colleague by the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System, claiming the hospital singled him out because of his 2003 complaints about computer system flaws that threatened patient safety. The doctor, a USF professor and founder of the hospital’s nephrology department, admits he was frustrated with network problems that kept doctors from getting critical patient information and protested by dumping his computer into a trash can in a public hallway. The VA fired him on November 7 for refusing to sign a memo from the new dialysis unit chief about unit changes.

Indian IT services company Tata Consultancy Services will commercialize its WebHealthCentre patient portal, originally developed as a social project to help deliver rural patient services such as health information, telemedicine, personal health records, and medical consultations.

A Harvard psychiatrist whose endorsement of antipsychotic drugs for children led to a 4,000% increase increase in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder is found by Congressional investigators to have been profiting handsomely from drug companies selling products used to treat it. Joseph Biederman violated Harvard’s policy on reporting outside income by failing to acknowledge drug company payments of up to $1.4 million. He twisted J&J’s arm to fund his research center at Mass General, listing three goals in its annual report that included "move forward the commercial goals of J&J." One executive from the drug company urged prompt payment of a $3,000 honorarium to Biederman, warning his superiors that Biederman has "a very short fuse … not someone to jerk around." Parents who are suing drug companies over harm caused by the expensive drugs want to depose him. Also exposed: an NIH-funded radio psychiatrist who extolled the virtues of such drugs without disclosing his $1.3 million payments from drug companies for giving marketing lectures. And: the chair of Emory University’s psychiatry department, who earned $2.8 million from drug companies over seven years and failed to report nearly half of it to the university. Kudos to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) for outing the scumbags, of which there is apparently ample supply.

E-mail me.

News 11/26/08

From Jupiter Jones: "Re: insurance companies and Susanne Madden interview. Boy, the ice is going to get thinner and thinner under the insurance apologists as Verden’s predictions start to ring true. BC of NC and LA (and maybe others) just published a new rule: providers must now PAY for any APPEALS. That’s right – the insurance company mis-pays a claim, which happens every single day, and the doctor has to pay at least $50+% of the claim to appeal it. I’m not kidding. If that doesn’t look like the result of ‘…they all sit in a room and think of creative ways to simultaneously drive up prices and reduce the attractiveness of the product, even if it means scaring off a bunch of their customers…’ then I don’t know what does!"

From Todd: "Re: virtual HIMSS. I filled out my virtual HIMSS satisfaction survey with these remarks. 1) Presentations could have been more substantive. A major health system talks about clinical transformation in a greenfield exercise in Australia? Interesting, but comparatively easy. How about someone who has been through the trenches of clin tran in a large, established health system? If a presenter is doing an ‘all happy story of IT implementation,’ you can guess it’s not reflective of your audience’s reality. I understand there are dozen or hundreds of applications for these speaking positions to choose from. 2) All the Web 2.0 stuff was unnecessary and confusing and some of it froze. There were only a handful of Webinars to manage. This wasn’t Orlando with 27,000 people. One page with all the presentation links would have done it. 3) Weak vendor turnout. Would have really liked to see some online demos of various new business and clinical apps (OR, bed management, ICU, med rec, etc.)  Premise and others, what made you decide not to participate? 4) If it were free, cherry picking a presentation or two would have been a nice diversion for the day, but of course it’s not free if you don’t work for a hospital."

From Wompa1: "Re: demand. Not exactly IT related, but it certainly could affect hospital revenue and spending." Link. Since I’m a big fan of economic theories, this Keynesian one is fun: when consumer demand drops, businesses decrease production rather than lower their prices. HSA guru John Goodman says that’s true in healthcare, where patients defer self-pay elective surgeries in tough times, leaving hospitals with less profitable insurance and charity cases.

From Eliza Cummings: "Re: jobs. Is there a way we can have a forum to look for software sales jobs? There is a boat load of great sales people and this is such a small industry that we really need to focus on who are the vendors that are looking." Absolutely. You can post jobs or resumes in the Jobs Offered/Positions Wanted section of HIStalk Discussion. You have to register, but it’s free (e-mail me first if you’re using a generic Hotmail or Gmail account since I usually delete those otherwise because of spammers). Any other ideas on how I can help?

Informatics Corporation of America wins two of five innovation award categories at the Healthcare IT Summit: greatest market potential and most innovative presentation. The company was also nominated for best new technology and best value. All were for its clinical interoperability products, which were originally developed at Vanderbilt.

Nova Scotia wins a public sector technology award for its EMR linked with lab and rad results. Nightingale Informatix is its partner on the project.

Ochsner CIO Lynn Witherspoon credits SIS with increasing virtual capacity of the hospitals ORs after Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Deborah Peel posts this critique of Google Flu Trends on the Patient Privacy Rights site, along with Google’s response to her inquiries. I have to say that, of all the healthcare privacy issues to fight, this one seems pretty inconsequential, but that’s just my opinion.

Emageon acquirer Health Systems Solutions gets a CEO interview on Fox Business. He says they have the interest and the financial backing to make more acquisitions and will be doing so.

RTLS vendor Awarepoint gets $13.3 million in Series D financing.

Here’s a way to cut your IT costs: arrest the CIO who’s robbing you blind. The New Zealand health district that I mentioned previously saw its IT spending drop from $8 million a year to $2 million the year after it fired the CIO who is accused of stealing $17 million over six years by submitting fake invoices. A board analyst says he asked the CIO about budget-busting server maintenance costs and was told, "What to you want me to do – turn the f…… things off?"

HIMSS "applauds" (does it have little hands somewhere?) Tom Daschle’s appointment as HHS secretary, apparently joining every other industry in hoping for some Uncle Sam handouts. HIMSS says it’s looking forward to "working closely" with Daschle, Obama, and every citizen of Washington, DC and its suburbs to make sure the feds help pay for technology that supposedly already pays for itself. HIMSS calls itself both a membership society and a vendor trade association in its press release, which is the first time I recall hearing anyone there publicly admit the latter. Does that mean we all belong to a vendor trade association?

Jobs: ANSOS Consultant (MA), Program and Project Manager (CO), Senior Product Manager (UT). Gwen at Healthcare IT Jobs is feeling expansive for the holidays and will give a free job listing for each one bought before December 31 if they mention HIStalk. You know it’s hard to get people relocated and working over the holidays, but that’s a great time to recruit and interview to be ready for January.

The folks at Nuance confirm that eScription co-founders and co-CEOs Ben Chigier and Paul Egerman are giving up day-to-day responsibilities, serving as advisors going forward. Nuance announced its $363 million eScription acquisition in April.

Lawmakers in Indonesia support a bill that requires HIV/AIDS patients in its remote Papua province to be implanted with microchips to allow them to be tracked and punished if they deliberately infect others. Strangely enough, the guy with that bright idea is a doctor and member of parliament. "Seeing that the number and spread of HIV in Papua is so high, I’ve been researching it and found online that microchips can be used in humans, so I am convinced that this can help us detect signals related to the spread of HIV in society." Well, at least he used the Internet to come up with his bizarre recommendation. What the hell is he thinking when he talks about "signals?"

IBM launches a cloud computing validation service, with the first customer being Allscripts and its online backup and recovery service that will move to IBM’s technology in the spring.

Francisco Partners closes its acquisition of labor management systems vendor API Software, also naming its new board members, all of whom have deep healthcare IT experience.

Medical University of South Carolina will require 1,200 employees to take four days off without pay starting in January. It will also lay off a dozen others.

Odd lawsuit: a woman in labor in the hospital is started on an epidural, but a physician’s assistant sneaks into her room and steals her fentanyl. He is arrested, claims the narcotic was for his dying dog, and pleads guilty and serves probation. The woman and her husband are suing the hospital and the PA two years later, claiming the hospital was negligent in hiring him, took too long to get her another dose, and seemed more worried about apprehending the PA than taking care of her labor.

An official in India asks people to not trash hospitals after patients die, even if the doctor involved was negligent.

Here is some vendor good news sent my way after I expressed fatigue with the other kind that has everyone in a funk:

• Sunquest is running a company program through the end of the year to support the World Vision humanitarian organization, encouraging employees to donate.
• Inpatient practice management system vendor Ingenious Med says it recently hired new employees in sales, marketing, development, account management, and implementation and is looking for more developers and implementers.
• Coding vendor CodeRyte will hire 25-30 people in 2009.
• Marc Winchester of Digital Healthcare, which offers the Retasure retinal imaging service, says revenue is up 75%, headcount is up 125%, space is up 100%, and patients served has increased 1,350%.

Have a great holiday. I will be eating turkey, watching football, and maybe writing a little HIStalk stuff if I can’t resist the siren song. If you need me for anything, now is a great time to e-mail me since I’m not in my usual frenzy to keep caught up.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

From Gatelynn: “Re: Mary Staley-Sirios. I so enjoy reading your info, especially the one noted below. Very inspiring. It makes you take a pause in all our hectic work lives to be successful for our companies and ourselves. I thought it was worth the time for me to say – THANK YOU!!! I hope you slip a few more of these in every once in awhile.” Gatelynn is referring to the post on former Baylor Healthcare System VP Mary Staley-Sirois leaving the corporate world to serve as VP of non-profit MediSend.

From Dr. Nick: “Re: Facebook. Are you and Mr HIStalk on Facebook?” Not yet, anyway. I kind of like that idea, actually. Maybe I’d learn secret details about our readers’ lives.

Intermountain Healthcare (UT) is adding additional Agfa Healthcare technology, including integrating IMPAX PACS systems for its 21 hospital facilities and 150+ clinics.

MEDSEEK donates its web portal and content management system to Tennessee-based Whitwell Middle School. The website will facilitate communication between the school, students, and the community. MEDSEEK’s system will also host a separate site dedicated to the school’s Children’s Holocaust Memorial and Paper Clips. I hadn’t heard of this project before, but apparently Whitwell students collected 11 million paper clips, representing six million Jews and five million others killed by the Nazis. A German rail car once used to transport Jews to concentration camps was donated and then filled with the paper clips. The memorial now permanently resides on the school grounds.

Epic also has the good neighbor thing figured out. So far this year, the company has donated about $356,000 to local Verona, WI organizations. Recipients include the public library, the food pantry, the police and fire departments, and area schools. In addition, Epic has donated over 300 PCs and laptops to the school system over the last two years.

CareTech Solutions is one of 11 companies in Michigan awarded tax incentives aimed at creating additional jobs. The Michigan Economic Development Corp. approved a $38 million credit over 10 years to encourage Caretech to expand in Michigan instead of Ohio. If Caretech accepts the deal, the company will build a new data center in Troy and create 400 direct jobs.

The HIMSS folks say that attendance at their recent virtual conference and expo was up 65% from April. An estimated 2,800 attendees logged in during the two-day event.

The Louisville paper profiles local medical billing company Zirmed, which is building new office space to accommodate its growth. Between 2003 and 2007, the company’s revenues have grown 465% and are expected to hit $35 million this year.

The AMA would like at least another year before enforcing a new Joint Commission policy that denounces disruptive, intimidating, or abusive physician behavior. It’s not that the AMA wants to allow its doctors another year to be bad; rather, they’d like clearer definitions for what constitutes bad behavior. Sounds like an opportunity for Miss Manners.

The Michigan State Medical Society is establishing the first state-sponsored physician network to connect 15,000 physicians. The service will be free to members; nonmembers will be charged a yet-to-be-determined fee.

I noticed in a recent post on Loftware’s blog that the Sisters of Mercy Health Systems’ supply chain division has added specific terms in contract language that require the use of GS1 standards in transactions and in production processing.

Nuance Communications announces a Q4 profit of $22 million ($.09/share,) which is much improved from its $3.41 million loss for the same quarter last year.

I am taking off to hang with family for the next few days and I can’t wait. I went to a friend’s funeral last week, which made me especially aware of my many blessings. It’s easy to take for granted so many things in life, such as health, financial and physical security, our loved ones, and our many freedoms. Life is short and uncertain, but I have a renewed commitment to living my dreams today. I hope everyone has time to give some thanks this week and perhaps make some time to reflect on how you can live your life’s passions — today. I am incredibly thankful to HIStalk, Mr. H, our sponsors, and our readers, because this is one fun job! Happy Thanksgiving all!

E-mail Inga.

Monday Morning Update 11/24/08

From Fourth Hansen Brother: "Re: big time Philips layoffs." Link. Philips will cut 1,600 jobs in its healthcare unit, along with raising prices and cutting other expenses. The North Andover, MA headquarters will get hit with100 layoffs.

From Aries Ram: "Re: Intel. Heard at the mid-year ATA show there was a small demo of Intel’s new home monitor. Comments were not endorsing, primarily based upon how data was displayed. Also, they had a slow booth at NAHC. Philips was busy … and picking up additional customers after Intel’s recall of acquired product.It isn’t always about the bells and whistles. Get the users to weigh in on the product."

From Alias Unknown: "Re: The MedicalPhone. The MedicalPhone website was down for a day or two earlier this week after they received press mentions. Glad to see it’s back up." Here’s the link again.

I’m tired of gloom and doom news. Let’s hear more about positive company developments and maybe something about the charitable causes companies will support during the holidays. On the business front, EnovateIT e-mailed over its list of 2008 accomplishments: gross sales up 35%, headcount doubled, square footage expanded eightfold, and new customers and products. Anyone else? 

The Wall Street Journal investigates questionable practices in UPMC’s liver transplant program and the shady transplant surgeon it brought in and later fired, but casts the net wider. "UPMC is a nonprofit hospital system whose income is largely exempt from taxes. Yet, it is increasingly run like a for-profit company, paying its executives high salaries, jumping into new activities and expanding abroad … Its chief executive, Jeffrey Romoff, earned $4 million in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2007, and 13 other employees earned in the roughly $1 million to $2 million range. For their transportation, UPMC leases a corporate jet. Earlier this year, UPMC relocated its headquarters into Pittsburgh’s tallest skyscraper, the 62-story U.S. Steel Tower."

Brigham and Women’s is using IVR/speech recognition technology from Vocantas to collect information from patients who have started new drug therapy. The company has developed applications for discharge follow-up, disease management, and running emergency call lists.

The Project Valour-IT fundraising challenge will wind down this week, ending on Thanksgiving Day. You can donate here to help cover the cost of a several wounded military member’s rehabilitative technology. The $54,532 raised so far is a long way from the $250,000 needed. Thanks.

I wrote Thursday about nurses in the UK using cell phone software to monitor data entered by chronic patients at home. The celebration was premature, as it turns out: the hospitals using the t+ Medical software have ditched it already, saying it was too cumbersome to put into practice.

Picis offers a free report on business intelligence tools.

I don’t have the courage to look at my 401K or IRA balances, but I figured it was time to check out HIT stock prices over the past six months since I don’t hold those:

• Google: down 58%
• Siemens: down 55%
• GE: down 54%
• QuadraMed: down 51%
• Allscripts: down 51%
• McKesson: down 46%
• Cardinal Health: down 45%
• NASDAQ Composite:  down 44%
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: down 36%
• Eclipsys: down 36%
• Cerner: down 30%
• Microsoft: down 30%
• Perot Systems: down 25%
• Athenahealth: down 23%
• HP: down 22%
• Quality Systems: down 9%
• CPSI: up 27%

Landmark Medical Center (RI) is operating under a court-ordered supervisor and seeking a buyer. Among other examples of bad healthcare conditions, the article mentions that 10 of New Jersey’s 80 hospitals have shut down in the last two years.

It appears that Oklahoma State University Medical Center is on the brink of closing or selling out to St. John Medical Center, with its Web site turned into a plea for state government help. It might be the only hospital Web site in existence that doesn’t say where the hospital is (Tulsa) or how to contact it.

The Social Security Administration wants to develop a system that can extract medical records information for disability claimants from EMR systems using the Continuity of Care Document format. It’s being piloted now at BIDMC and Cleveland Clinic.

An argument between Muskogee Regional Medical Center (OK) and local surgeons goes to the state’s Supreme Court. The hospital insists that two surgeons must be on ED call for 192 hours per month, based on its bylaws that require around-the-clock coverage. The doctors say the hospital gets federal money for ED coverage and should hire its own.

Vendor Deals and Announcements

• Parkland Health & Hospital System (TX) implements Innovation’s PharmASSIST pharmacy automation systems across its nine pharmacy sites. PharmASSIST is integrated with the Cerner PharmNet system to process 6,000 prescriptions a day.
• SecureCare Technologies’ Sfax solution is now integrated into Addison Health Systems’ WritePad EMR.
• Interactive patient care system provider Skylight Healthcare Systems signs an agreement to deploy Skylight ACCESS for Cancer Treatment Centers of America’s new facility at Western Regional Medical Center.
• Edward Hospital and Health Services (IL) will implement Allscripts’ Enterprise EHR/PM solution for 50+ providers. Another 40 providers will use just the Allscripts’ PM solution.
• Centegra Health Systems (IL) signs a long term service agreement with Perot to provide support for its IT platform and assistance implementing a clinical system and other technologies.
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital (MA) will use Vocantas’ CallAssure interactive voice response system to study the effectiveness of using automated telephone follow-up systems to manage chronically ill patients using commonly prescribed medications.
• Former Cerner sales leader Mike Fiorito is named the new chief sales and marketing office for LifeWatch Services.
• Children’s Health System (AL) will deploy Eclipsys’ Sunrise solutions at its new $500 million facility opening in 2012.
• Acesis announces the release of Clinical Product Review Suite, a new product designed to automate the peer review process for hospitals and other healthcare providers.
• Harold Miller is named president and CEO of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement.
• Twelve critical access hospitals in North Dakota launch a pilot program focused on improving patient safety through automated and shared data collection. The Critical Access Hospital Quality Network with use Clarity Group’s Healthcare SafteyZone Portal.
• Western Missouri Medical Center completes installation of DR Systems’ PACS solution.
• Rodney Schutt is named Asprya’s new CEO, having previously been with Luminetx, Smith and Nephew Orthopaedics, and GE Healthcare.
• Seattle Children’s Hospital selects DatStat to provide its staff tools to improve enterprise research and to facilitate feedback from employees, patients, and patients’ families.
• Wexford-Mercy PHO (MI) selects WellCentive Registry to help improve clinical quality outcomes and streamline the care delivery process.
• BCBS of Vermont says it has saved almost $500K using VUE Compensation Management’s compensation management technology.
• Orthopedic Associates of Meadville (OH) selects SRS’s EMR solution for its five-physician practice.
• Daniel Kohl is named the new president and CEO of clinical documentation service provider Spheris.
• Bert Fish Medical Center (FL) selects Xceedium’s GateKeeper technology to provide secure remote administration services.
• Mediware Information Systems acquires the assets of pharmacy management software provider Hann’s On Software (HOS). The purchase, which includes $3.5 million in cash plus potential operational performance monies, adds 320 pharmacy facilities to Mediware’s client base.
• dbMotion is named winner of the Healthcare IT Summit’s Innovation Award in the Best Case Study Presentation category. The winning presentation focused on dbMotion’s implementation at UPMC.
• Healthvision solutions is a new reseller for MediSolution’s Virtuo BI solutions.
• The Defense Health Information Management Systems Program selects Base Technologies to provide teleradiology support services for Medweb’s PACS solution in war zones.
• CCHIT announces three new members to its board of trustees. Meighan Girgus, EVP for the American Heart Association; Wes Rishel, VP for Gartner; and Dr. Bruce Taffel, VP/CMO for Shared Health. They will serve staggered, three-year terms.
• Lynn Hudson, national EMR product manager for HealthPort,is a new member of The Electronic Health Records Association Executive Committee.

E-mail me.

News 11/21/08

From Wayne Twitchell: "Re: Boston Globe article. If you’re charged with something serious like manslaughter, do you get the local city/town lawyer to defend you, or do you go into one of the big city firms who have a lot of resources and do a lot of extra things (pro bono work, research, etc.) that a small local firm can’t do? I go with the big city firm. The defense and the outcome could be the same, but it’s my life we’re talking about. Granted, the national (or local) healthcare situation is different in that we’re all paying insurance and there’s the perception that our costs are going up because big city hospitals are getting more money for the same things that community hospitals do. But I think it’s unfair to compare a big hospital or hospital system to a community hospital just because they do some of the same stuff." 

From The PACS Designer: "Re: digitally connected patients and SOA. Intel has entered the digitally connected patient field with a new FDA 510(k) approved application called the Intel Healthguide which allows clinicians to monitor remotely the activities and conditions of their patients. Additionally, Intel will be using service-oriented architecture (SOA) to accomplish the monitoring tasks." Link.

From Unknown1: "Re: health benefits. I think it would be very interesting for you to do a poll on the current health benefits employers are providing their employees this year due to increasing costs of services, economy, etc. Here is a link describing the new plans UnitedHealth Group is providing all its employees. They are only offering plans with HSAs; annual deductibles of $4.6K per family and nearly $10K for annual out of pocket expenses. It is very disappointing to see a leading healthcare insurance company treat its employees the way it treats the providers — squeezing every last dime out of them." Link.

Listening: Camper Van Beethoven, 80s college radio eclectics whose music crosses all genres (and who knock out a respectable Pink Floyd cover).

CCHIT is only halfway covering its budget through certification fees so far, so they’re wondering if Obama will fund them after their federal contract ends on April 19. Seems like just about every Bush HIT goal didn’t amount to much except to get David Brailer a cushy post-government job (thriving RHIOs, EMR adoption, a strong ONCHIT, adoption of VistA, etc. were all kind of a bust) but at least CCHIT has had tangible results. Whether that’s good or bad depends on who you ask.

The Decatur paper writes a feature on St. Mary’s Hospital (IL) and includes a photo of its MEDITECH system.

Google’s SecondLife killer, Lively, dies early in its FirstLife.

Also kaput: the print version of PC Magazine, bowing out after a 27-year run to become an online-only publication. At the rate print publications are shrinking and dying, we’ll have plenty of trees.

To your right: put your name in the Subscribe to Updates box to join thousands of readers who get instant notification when I write something new. Or, right below that, click the Email This to a Friend icon to pop up a handy-dandy form to easily e-mail everyone you know to convince them to read HIStalk and help reduce the neurotic behaviors that Inga and I exhibit when we worry about being unpopular. The Search HIStalk box Googles through the 5.5 years of HIStalk, while clicking the ugly green box below it lets you send a confidential message (with attachments, even) to me like we were spies or something. And please, if you have the interest, please click some of those sponsor ads to your left to avoid me having to explain to some Internet hotshot company VP why they aren’t getting clicks and therefore will not be renewing their sponsorship, which will then raise those neurotic behaviors all over again.

AHRQ gives University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston a $1.3 million grant to train six students for five years on HIT. They’re working on interesting projects.

Jobs: Soarian Consultants (MA), Epic Resolute Consultant (PA), Multiple Epic Positions (CO).

Henry Ford Health System gets an eHealthcare award for its Web site.

Struggling Canadian EMR vendor MedcomSoft sells its Canadian Medworks 4.0 customer base to HTN for $85,000. Could be related to this announcement, in which a Canadian investment company places a $100,000 loan "to a third-party company in the healthcare/technology sector … to undertake a strategic acquisition." Seems like those numbers should have some additional zeroes to be worthy of press releases.

UCSD (CA) chooses FairWarning for privacy auditing.

Kindred Healthcare (KY) will use Allscripts Referral Management.

Document management vendor DB Technology names Charles Wilson as CEO.

At least it isn’t more Cerner problems: Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead has its ambulance booted. The private towing company said signs were clear, but the ambulance’s tracking equipment showed it was left for just one minute while the driver helped a patient into a dialysis facility.

Also in the UK, nurses are monitoring patients who transmit data to hospitals by cell phone. The t+ Medical software costs around $30 per patient per month.

And still again in the UK, IT systems three London hospitals are shut down and ambulances diverted after the Mytob mail worm is discovered on some PCs.

Unrelated: kudos to Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York, grilling the CEOs of the Big Three auto companies on why taxpayers should underwrite their continued incompetence: "There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses. It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious. Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it." 

A reader points out another way to help disabled war veterans (other than clicking the Project Valour-IT graphic to your right): donate money or raise puppies for Canine Companions for Independence.

Lofware announces Web services capability for its print server.

A New York Times article profiles American Well, which offers 10-minute virtual patient visits with physicians by Internet webcam through insurers. Interesting: AIG is providing malpractice insurance and it’s cheap enough that the health plans are paying for it instead of charging the docs. The company is a HealthVault partner. Almost everyone on the leadership team came from TriZetto.

Acquisition expert Derek Eckelman joins Sunquest as VP of business development.

Mammoth Hospital, which is anything but mammoth at 17 beds but is in Mammoth Lakes, CA, implements DeviceLock USB security. Some nice quotes are included from IT operations supervisor Paul Fottler. Sounds pretty cool: network admins can lock out USB ports, WiFi and Bluetooth adapters, peripheral devices, ports, printers, and other plug-and-play devices on PCs, even by day of the week and time. It also enforces encryption policies. It’s $42 each. PC Magazine gave it four stars and the company has some interesting free downloads: Plug and Play Auditor, Active Ports, Active Shutdown, and several other utilities.

The iCEphone, originally developed for the British military by The Medical Phone Ltd. of Edinburgh, Scotland, will be sold in a medical/emergency software configuration.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

From Tammi: “Re: holiday parties. My company doesn’t have holiday parties, but this weekend while chatting at the coffee shop, a couple mentioned their son runs a high-end restaurant in the Denver area. Included on his property is a venue which is booked a year in advance for corporate holiday parties. The companies are calling in great numbers to try to get out of their bookings.” In our unscientific poll to the right, it looks like 41% of companies are either cancelling or scaling back parties this year. I’m predicting a related decline in Alka-Seltzer sales as well.

With all this gloomy news about layoffs and poor financial results, I have decided I need news that lifts my spirits. Thus, the rest of today’s HERtalk will contain only good news. Up near the top is athenahealth’s plan to add 100 new jobs in 2009 in its new Belfast, ME facility, which already employs 140.

I also heard that Digital Healthcare, a provider of a retinal health assessment solution, just raised an additional $5 million in funding to expand operations. The NC company employs a number of former Misys folks, including former VPs Marc Winchester and Scott Sanner.

I am sure that Peter S. Amenta, MD, PhD is happy to be appointed the new dean for UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He has served as interim dean for the last two years.

Scott P. Serota, President and CEO of BCBSA releases a statement saying, “BCBSA and the 39 member Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies today announced support for every individual being required to have coverage and all insurers being required to accept everyone regardless of their health status.” For anyone who has ever been declined insurance, this is a comforting statement. AHIP had a similar endorsement today, announcing support for guaranteed coverage without pre-existing exclusions. (OK, I recognize that insurance for all has its issues, but remember, I’m having a happy post day).

Here is a technology I want to hear more about. M*Modal launches AnyModal CDS Mobile for the iPhone. Apparently the SaaS technology allows clinicians to dictate via the iPhone. The product uses “speech understanding” services that allow the dictation to be captured, understood, and transcribed real time, giving physicians the ability to immediately review and sign off on the document.

Speaking of iPhones, I’m betting this poor woman will be happier in divorce than she is in marriage. She discovers that her husband has e-mailed some “personal” photos of himself to another woman via his iPhone. He claims the Genius bar experts at the local Apple store said it’s a known iPhone “glitch” that photos sometimes mistakenly attach themselves to an e-mail address. The skeptical wife sends a question to an Apple discussion board, asking if other users agree with the Genius. The consensus: the marriage has the glitch.

Without a doubt, this story helped lift my spirits. Former Baylor Healthcare System (TX) VP of clinical transformation Mary Staley-Sirois leaves the corporate world to serve as VP of Global Program Development for MediSend, a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides medical aid, healthcare education and technology, and other services to hospitals in developing countries. Staley-Sirois will apparently take her extensive experience from Baylor and from Healthlink before that to grow the organization’s worldwide healthcare initiatives. Love it.

E-mail Inga.

Reports: Obama Chooses Daschle as HHS Secretary

The Washington Post reports that President-elect Obama has chosen former Senate Majority Leader and South Dakota Democrat Tom Daschle as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Sources also report that Daschle will be given broad healthcare policy responsibilities that include expanding healthcare coverage while reducing costs.

Daschle’s book, "Critical: What We Can Do about the Health-Care Crisis," called for a healthcare oversight entity similar to the Federal Reserve Board. He was supporter of the failed Clinton health plan in the early 90s.

The Republication National Committee is already criticizing the choice of Daschle, an early Obama backer, saying that both Daschle and his wife work for lobbying firms.

News 11/19/08

From Jamie Sommers: "Re: Payerpath. Word is that Art Glasgow, the Payerpath president, resigned from Allscripts-Misys today on a town hall conference call. He was a good guy and the reason why Misys bought Payerpath in the first place." Unverified.

From The PACS Designer: "Re: federated identify. You will be hearing soon about a new concept called federated identity. Microsoft and other software firms are working on bringing this concept to fruition in the next year or so. Cloud computing requires a better method of identifying users that won’t overload requests for additions to Active Directories. Microsoft has a software download called Services Connector that provides the ability to identify authorized e-mail addresses from federated databases through its Live ID software when logging on to a cloud service." Link.

From Fourth Hansen Brother: "Re: FDA. Have they been cheating in medical devices?" Link. FDA scientists claim that agency executives pressured them to change their findings so that medical devices could get marketing approval. 

NotADupe claimed last time that a marketing person planted the Clara Barton comment about an Allscripts product at AMIA since it sounded pretty rosy and "I was at AMIA and I didn’t see Allscripts/Misys there." I thought it sounded legit, although it was borderline because it was so positive. My Allscripts contact saw the mention and quizzed all the marketing people there to make sure someone didn’t go rogue and post a fake comment here, then cast the net wider to see what Clara Barton was talking about. There was indeed an Allscripts demo at AMIA, although a brief and informal one. Jacob Reider MD, the company’s medical director, did a five-minute demo of Allscripts Prenatal at the Primary Care Informatics Working Group on Saturday night in front of around 40 people. The product isn’t GA yet, but I’m sure you’ll hear more when it is. I also appreciate that Allscripts was ready to go after anyone on their side who tried to mislead readers here, which is fortunately unnecessary since everything was above-board.

From HITPundit: "Re: Partners. There is a good read in the Sunday Boston Globe about the Partners effect. I thought it was about patients? Non-profit status for most of these places is a joke." Link. Of course it is. The story is about how Taj Mahospitals get paid more money to deliver average care for certain services than their less-ritzy but better-outcome competition. It mentions Mass General’s $686 million expansion and Partners’ $1.7 billion in profit in the last four years, while Caritas Christi was borrowing money to pay for oxygen tanks. It also mentions Partners’ leveraging its patient perception to manhandle insurance companies, resulting in 30% higher payment than similar hospitals (although Children’s Boston has the highest rates in Massachusetts). The quote HITPundit liked came from the chairman of Partners’ board: "Some are able to spend more than others. It’s our fortune that we’re probably in the lead on those investments. And several hospitals aren’t able to keep that pace. And that’s what I, as a businessman, call market forces, if you will." I thought this snip was interesting: "And it is there, in the workaday world of hospital care, that the hospitals’ reputation for unmatched excellence fades – and with it much of the rationale for the higher payments they receive for such treatments. The growing, if still inadequate, body of data available about hospital quality paints a fairly consistent picture of the care at the Brigham and Mass. General: often good, but rarely extraordinary, and sometimes inferior to the care available at other hospitals."

From Pacstech: "Re: stolen records. How about an arrest warrant for the idiot that allowed the records to be stolen? With 25 beds, how many people in medical records are we taking about here?" Bags of paper medical records stolen from Down East Community Hospital (ME) wash up on a local riverbank.

From HCC Princess: "Re: CMS. CMS is auditing 30-40 Medicare Advantage Plans. Claims from 200 random members will be audited and apparently any unsubstantiated claims will be extrapolated across the entire plan’s membership base. CMS is looking to recover a lot of money."

From Vern Den Herder: "Re: Epic. A healthcare organization in Connecticut recently signed with Epic. Wondering who?"

From Vince Ciotti: "Re: the $25K IT project. Spending more in IT won’t get you squat for recognition. Spend less! Use the $25K as rewards for ideas in a cost-cutting campaign that solicits ideas from your IT staff. $10K to the winner, $5K to runner-up, etc. Have finance vet the ideas and only the ones finance says will produce real ROI (that is, reducing someone’s budget next year) get considered. In the 100+ IT assessments we’ve done with The Hunter Group and Navigant Consulting, some of the best ideas have been given to us by IT staffer we interviewed. Why pay us to find them – get them yourself from your own staff!!"

Computerworld writes up Midland Memorial Hospital’s OpenVistA implementation, although emphasizing "cheap" rather than "works just fine" (the "old code" remark was snarky, especially given that many commercial products are older than VistA, which was rolled out in 1996). The hospital’s project was named as a winner of a 2008 InfoWorld 100 award.

I admit that I’m old-school patriotic, not a fair-weather flag-waver, so I was happy to join in the Valour-IT Veterans Day fundraiser, which ends next Thursday (Thanksgiving Day — how appropriate). My 401k may be hitting a rough patch, but I can darn sure find a few dollars to help buy a severely injured soldier, sailor, or airman some technology to help them recover from devastating war wounds. Their sacrifice (and that of their families) isn’t diminished one whet by the fact that I don’t always agree with the orders they are given (I’m sure they’re not always thrilled about it, either, which is all the more reason to get them back on track). It costs around $700 to provide a laptop with assistive technology and I was happy to provide one to someone who deserves it. Being a 19-year-old kid surrounded by the constant threat of harm and miserable conditions far from home is bad enough, but being shipped back to your family missing limbs has to suck big time. All donations of any amount are welcome and are tax-deductible.

Barry Chaiken MD, formerly of McKesson and BearingPoint, is now CEO at Medting of Palma De Mallorca, Spain (field trip!) Never heard of them, but it looks like a physician collaboration platform for sharing cases that can include media.

TELUS, the Canadian telecommunications company that bought Emergis a year ago, which had previously bought Dinmar in 2006 (and therefore its Oacis clinical system), creates TELUS Health Solutions and says it will invest $100 million over three years in it.

SCI Solutions wins two marketing awards: one for its ad graphics and the top award overall for its Access Management magazine.

CodeRyte gets $13 million in Series D funding, for a total VC funding of $50 million.

It took Inga awhile to get confirmation from some earlier reader rumor reports, but she has verified officially that Ingenix has acquired Global Works Systems, Inc. and will make them part of Ingenix Consulting.

This stock analyst says GE is in big trouble, calling it "a bank disguised as an industrial conglomerate" and an over-leveraged one at that, saying that if GE fails, it "could trigger the mother of all bailouts." I’ve speculated all along that its GE Capital exposure was a lot more than Jeff Immelt was owning up to. Speaking of which, may we assume that Intermountain’s CareCast pig-lipsticking project is either dead or at least so far behind that no one could possibly still care?

Right after I wrote the above, along comes a GE Healthcare press release touting "Digital Day One" without ever really saying what it is, although data-sharing and new hospital construction are mentioned. I read the release three times and I still have no idea what they’re talking about, with no clarification available on their site because the press release isn’t there at all. Marc Probst is quoted, so Intermountain is involved, apparently with regard to "timely sharing of newly published medical breakthroughs and best practices."

But speaking of GE, this Motley Fool analyst tries to figure out which company is more screwed up: GE (GE Capital) or Siemens (bribery).

Half of primary care physicians say they’d get out of medicine if they had an alternative, all because of insurance and government red tape. Everything said there is pretty much what Susanne Madden said when I interviewed her.

University of Toledo’s McKesson EDIS implementation is written up on its site.

Former Cerner sales guy Mike Fiorito is named chief sales and marketing officer of cardiac monitoring services vendor  LifeWatch Services. Hopefully he’ll direct better press release writing since I had to read the first two paragraphs of this one at least five times to make sense of it (and I read a ton of press releases).

Texas Health Resources demonstrates a patient-doctor relationship tool built on the Microsoft’s Surface computers, that "wave your hand over the coffee table" gadget that Steve Ballmer kept yapping about in his HIMSS keynote. More important applications have already been built for it, however, as Harrah’s has Surface computers running in Rio Casino "allowing customers to flirt and order specialty drinks using the technology."

Children’s Health System (AL) picks what sounds like the entire Eclipsys Sunrise product line. A big peds hospital customer is a great opportunity, but I’ve never seen one yet that wasn’t a pain in the adult-sized ass. I guarantee that a six-hospital IDN with one peds hospital will spend 50% of the entire project effort just accommodating the sometimes bizarre but indefatigably argued practices in peds, always defended with the reminder that "kids aren’t just little adults." Sometimes I think they’re as unlike general community hospitals as a veterinary hospital, occasionally for good reasons.

Odd: a former New Zealand health district CIO goes on trial for stealing $11 million US by submitting false invoices. He had "grand properties," a luxury car collection, and a 150-foot, 17-bedroom yacht.

Misys CEO Mike Lawrie on the prospects for Allscripts-Misys: ""Everyone recognises spending in US healthcare is out of control and is projected to consume 17 per cent of [gross domestic product]. And they’ve just spent a trillion bailing out the financial system. There is a limit to how much money you can print. And my view is there’s no way, with a new administration, [rising costs] can be left unchecked. And technology will be part of the solution."

Spheris names former Pediatric Services of America CEO Dan Kohl as president and CEO.

Glenn Dennis is named president and COO of Perry Biomedical Corporation, which makes hyperbaric oxygen chambers. He was previously with DataLoom, Exigent, SoftMed, and GE.

Chinese Internet company Baidu.com reels when it’s found that a chunk of its paid search revenue comes from unlicensed medical and drug customers, whose paid links were mixed in with real results based on popularity. Its a lot like Google, making its founder a billionaire.

Kenya has an ambitious plan to connect all hospitals over the Internet for telemedicine, ordering supplies, and providing second opinions. It will also support TelePresence, Cisco’s high-quality videoconferencing tool.

East Tennessee Heart Consultants brags on its IT outsourcing to Claris Networks, claiming it costs less and is more reliable.

Hospital layoffs: Beaumont Hospital (MI), 500 employees; MetroHealth (OH), 25 employees.

The University of Texas System, reorganizing UTMB after Hurricane Ike damage and massive layoffs that started this week, brings in Kurt Salmon Associates to help develop a plan.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

A computer virus at Barts and The London NHS Trust causes a system shutdown that lasts more than 24 hours. E-mail and Internet access were affected, but not the Cerner application (finally there is an issue that couldn’t be blamed on a Cerner application).

Speaking of hospitals across the pond, several are facing closure because they are not attracting enough patients. Recent reforms allow patients to choose where they’d like to be treated, which has shifted traffic to the more successful medical centers.

The University of Missouri and Cerner are winners of CHIME’s Collaboration Award for using HIT to help UM family physicians and patients manage chronic diseases.

NightHawk Radiology Holdings announces the appointment of David M. Engert as CEO, following the resignation of Dr. Paul E. Berger. Engert is a former McKesson and Quality Care Systems exec. Berger, who co-founded NightHawk along with his son Jon, will remain as non-executive chairman of the board. Jon Berger, an SVP and board member, has also resigned from both the company and board.

Barcode POC provider IntelliDOT and latric Systems sign an agreement that formalizes pricing for interfaces, implementation, and maintenance for customers using Iatric System interfaces between IntelliDOT and MEDITECH solutions.

Beginning in January, the Seton Family of Hospitals (TX) is implementing a new dress code for nurses and other patient care employees. Tattoos must be covered and piercings limited to earrings and a small nose stud. I personally prefer fashion accessories to permanent body adornment, but tattoos don’t particularly bother me (assuming everyone has had the appropriate hepatitis screening), although I find I can never quite look someone in the eye if they have a nose ring or piercings in their eyebrows. Even though they have no effect on the quality of care, I suppose some patients would be more at ease if they didn’t see a naked lady tattoo while getting a blood draw.

Eclipsys claims they’ve exceeded sales targets for the EPSi budgeting and financial decision support systems for the first three quarters. Their announcement doesn’t mention if their sales goals were set too low or whether the sales have translated to higher profits, but, it’s still good to hear that someone is making headway in these economic times.

A friend mentioned that his employer (a law office) is downsizing its holiday bash this year. Rather than renting a steak restaurant for an evening of expensive food and drink, they’re having a holiday luncheon delivered to the office. Some of the party savings will be donated to charity. It got me wondering what other companies are planning; hence the new poll to your right. This year, Mr. H and I are planning a Virtual Holiday Party. We are thinking perhaps setting up an online chat and he’ll drink his beer while I sip on my wine. Mr. H is tight with his money, so he still hasn’t decided if we can bring dates to the affair. Meanwhile, according to the Raleigh paper, the Allscripts-Misys folks will have a chance to act like one big happy family at their convention center holiday bash.

Red Hat chairman Matthew Szulik is named E&Y’s 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year for turning his company into a billion-dollar business. Glen Tullman of Allscripts was a finalist in the Technology division.

MedcomSoft announces its Q1 results. The news remains bleak for this 2007 Best in KLAS winner, now desperate for a buyer. Revenues were down 10% year on year and the net loss was almost $800K.

Former VeriChip CEO Scott R. Silverman regains control of the company after a $5.4 million purchase of common stock. In addition, the company purchased all intellectual property rights related to its human implantable RFID technology. Silverman claims he is eager to “re-ignite” the company.

Virtual Radiologic appoints Kevin H. Roche to its board of directors. He’s a managing partner at Vita Advisors and formerly the CEO of Ingenix and general counsel for UnitedHealthGroup.

Thomson Reuters releases its annual study of the top cardiovascular care hospitals.

Peter Dolphin is named VP of business development for Beacon Partners. He was most recently the VP of sales at eScription, and before that worked at IDX Systems (GE Healthcare).

E-mail Inga.

Monday Morning Update 11/17/08

From GatorFan: "Re: Philips. Rumor has it that Philips is undergoing a significant restructuring that could result in a layoff of 5,000 people. The announcement will supposedly be made early next week." Apparent confirmation is here — the Plain Dealer says 5% of the healthcare headcount will be cut loose.

From Carlotta Ailes: "Re: retail clinics. RediClinic opens that largest retail clinic in the nation with Memorial Hermann. The clinics are using athenahealth’s EMR/PM system." Link. It’s in a Houston H-E-B grocery store, 926 square feet with three exam rooms and a blood draw room.

From Bill the Cat: "Re: OSF. Our company was told by the higher-ups at OSF that they were moving to Epic about four months ago. Plans are in place and it should be done in 2-3 years (migration is never easy)." And from Techsan: "Re: OSF. They are already live on Epic’s Ambulatory EMR and Scheduling, but they are now also replacing existing ‘core’ systems (i.e., remaining rev cycle and inpatient EMR) with Epic."

From NotADupe: "Re: Clara Barton. Sounds like you were duped by a marketing plant. I was at AMIA and I didn’t see Allscripts/Misys there." Could be, but it’s hard to tell. The comment (barely) passed the sniff test, I admit, but it was just believable enough that I ran it. Companies try planting PR sometimes, but I don’t run it if I’m suspicious (a consulting company that I should name tried it today, posing as a customer innocently inquiring about a competitor’s acquisition). A few companies have also stiffed me on their HIStalk sponsorship in one way or another (want me to name them?) and they won’t be getting mentioned here, either, at least not in a positive way.

From Nasty Parts: "Re: Sage Healthcare. Rumor is that [name omitted]’s days are numbered. Top consultants are looking at internal processes, comp plans, etc. All of Andy Corbin’s former hires are slowly being excised from the company. Everyone is happy." I didn’t feel right mentioning the name, but if it happens, I’ll give you credit for predicting it.

From Pro from Dover: "Re: layoffs. A week ago, McKesson began laying off salespeople, approximately 20% of ‘new’ salesforce. Also, Misys/Allscripts sales layoffs are beginning this week." It would be more newsworthy if a company wasn’t laying off, especially in sales, where "layoffs" is often a nice synonym for "parting ways with under-performers who aren’t making their numbers." It’s always been a cold business, but likely to be colder still for at least a short while. No one in sales would be surprised by that revelation. On the other hand, stocking up on cheaper noobs is hardly a recipe for success, so companies will have to balance expense vs. potential long-term benefit. 

From Chuck Lumley: "Re: Sensitron. Rajiv Jularia, CEO of Sensitron, died last month rather suddenly. The company and product status are unclear. While they struggled, they had an early stage, device-agnostic, Bluetooth-enabled vital sign data capture system."     

Listening: The Who, Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970. Video here. Keith Moon was the most exuberant and charismatic drummer in modern history, arguably the lead instrument instead of Townshend’s guitar, especially amazing since Moon was probably stoned out of his mind most of the time (a video from another concert shows him extracted unconscious from the drum kit by roadies and hauled offstage, with an audience volunteer chosen to finish up the set in his place). He died in 1978 at 32; bassist John Entwistle died in 2002. Daltrey is now 64, Townshend is 63. Also: The Dilettantes, 60s-sounding psych-pop.

Streamline Health isn’t so good at keeping secrets (or maybe they’re crafty about technically honoring a hospital’s wish not to be named, but identifying them nonetheless). This press release (warning: PDF) coyly refers to a "leading New York City-based medical institution" without naming it. Check out the link address, though. Super sleuth Inga noticed that. I told her this week that she’s like a terrier when she latches onto a rumor, instilling 60 Minutes-type fear in PR and executive offices as she starts bugging everyone she can find to tell her the truth. Readers benefit from that, of course.

Sentry Data Systems of Deerfield Beach, FL has shown its support for HIStalk by becoming a Platinum Sponsor, for which I am most grateful. If you’re in hospital IT, your pharmacy contact will be interested in Sentry because they offer Sentinel RCM (supply chain compliance, GPO, and 340b tracking), Datanex (secure technology backbone with APIs), and Sentrex (pharmacy claims, including 340b replenishment). Just announced: the HealthBIT business intelligence platform for hospitals, which constructs a queryable data set from clinical and administrative data sources and provides tools for reviewing clinical protocols, identifying patient safety concerns with pharmacy procurement, cost analysis, and a notification engine. Thanks to Sentry Data Systems for supporting HIStalk and its readers.

Nortel dumps ballast overboard (employees and executives) trying to stay afloat after a $3.4 billion quarterly loss. It appears to not be working as the stock sheds another 28% Friday to end up at $0.56 per share, dropping its market cap to just $278 million. 

Think your company is the only one struggling a little and laying off staff? Not so. I hear a lot of insider stuff and the headlines you see only begin to tell the story. Hospitals are getting stung hard by investment losses and lack of capital funds, so IT will take hits in many of them. I think that’s why companies are acquiring consulting firms — business should be good as hospitals try to implement and improve systems already on the books and new hires will be hard to get approved. Consulting firms are good at making a sound business case to strapped hospital CFOs (much better than the average IT department, unfortunately) so I think you’ll see more CIO replacements, more outsourcing, and more contract implementations tied to specific patient care and financial results. None of that’s bad unless you’re on the wrong end of it.

And speaking of providers, here’s a question for hospital CIOs, CTOs, and other IT management. Let’s say an average 400-bed hospital is cutting back on some big-ticket IT projects, leaving the IT department looking for high impact, short-term projects to knock out during the slack time. Let’s say the limits are $25,000 not counting internal labor, it can’t require capital funds, and it has to deliver high visibility/high ROI with immediate operational impact. What projects have you done that you would recommend?

Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate finance committee, releases his Call to Action paper (warning: PDF) on health reform. From his remarks: "Let me be clear about one thing: There’s no way to really solve America’s economic troubles without fixing the health care system.If you fix Wall Street, you fix the housing crisis, you change taxes, you fix everything else, and you don’t fix health care, then government spending will keep going up. Health care costs suck up more than 16 percent of our economy, and they’re growing. Deficitswill continue to rise. And America will just have more economic troubles down the road."

Fundraising ends for Project Valour-IT on Thanksgiving, so click the graphic to your right to help provide assistive technology laptops to severely wounded soldiers. $37,000 has been donated so far and our Navy team is in the lead (although all money goes to all service branches – having teams is just a way to keep score). The project has no money for laptops at the moment and is hoping for $250,000 in donations to buy a bunch of laptops at around $700 each (DoD was so impressed with Valour-IT that they buy the Dragon NaturallySpeaking). Any amount is appreciated.

John at Chilmark Research likes the idea that big players are studying PHRs, but is skeptical about CITL’s optimistic, vendor-sponsored report. "For the cost/benefit analysis, CITL proposed a scenario of 80% user adoption within 10 years that will generate $19B in annual savings. 80% adoption? $19B is savings? What are they smoking over there?"

Odd: a Seattle dentist and oral surgeon (but also an MD) is sued for messing up a 15-year-old girl’s non-cosmetic breast reduction surgery. He’s been sued for malpractice at least 10 times, has paid out over $1 million in claims, and was mildly reprimanded (fined $4,000) for being implicated in the death of a liposuction patient, for whom CPR was initiated six minutes after the patient stopped breathing.

An industry rag wrote this, a reader reports, although it was fixed in the online version by the time I went for a screen shot: "In addition, Epic won the first certification for an enterprise EHR that provides comprehensive ambulatory, inpatient and emergency department EHRs that are inoperable."

Emageon’s acquirer HSS announces Q3 numbers: revenue up 106%, EPS -$0.42 vs. -$0.40. They’re good at hiding the loss, not mentioning it until the eleventh paragraph after leading off with a revenue headline and jamming in all the good-sounding numbers first. Readers with a short attention span might be impressed by their quarterly results.

Citrix will release its XenDesktop and XenApp software available for the iPhone in a few months, allowing all Windows applications to be virtualized and then run over an iPhone virtual desktop. That’s already available for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, but the iPhone version will allow using the cool gesture stuff. I imagine this will be hot, although I don’t know how much work you could do on that little screen that doesn’t have a real keyboard.

An SVP of drugmaker Gilead Sciences advises Microsoft on healthcare IT: "If Microsoft really wants to own the world, create a standardized electronic medical records system and give it away for free the first five years. Then start charging." I bet he’s not nearly as keen on the idea of doing the same in his own industry, i.e. making generic Tamiflu and Flolan at a cheaper price instead of charging to much to treat diseases like HIV for a $2 billion annual profit. He’s got a point about standardizing by offering a free product that sets the standard by its own ubiquity, but then again, even a free EMR isn’t much of a deal for doctors unless it saves them time.

A British surgeon is suspended for downloading NHS medical information about his secretary, her family, and her boyfriend after becoming infatuated with her. He claims his current wife was a bad choice and he hoped to do better by turning the secretary’s information over to a private detective to check her out before he made his move. The secretary found out when the surgeon’s wife accused her of having an affair with her husband, after which the secretary then snooped around on his work computer and found her own medical records, the surgeon’s list of tactics on how he planned to win her over, and an impressively massive porn stash.

Cleveland Clinic doctors pick the Top 10 procedures and products that will influence medicine in the next year. On the list: NHIN (#10), which the good doctors must not know much about if they’re thinking it will have an effect in the next 13 months.

South Korea and its hospitals want a piece of the medical tourism action, trolling for budget-conscious Americans as well as rich Arabs who can’t get a US visa because of terrorism-induced red tape. One hospital is building a hotel, a concert hall, and an art museum to complement its 18-hole golf course. Immigration rules were changed to allow patients and families to stay up to four years without a visa. "For Hassan and Fatima Abdulla, the trip has been one seamless surgery/tourism package. When they arrived in Seoul in October, a car from Wooridul and an English-speaking nurse were waiting for them at the airport. Abdulla found his wife’s hospital room – furnished with a television, broadband Internet access, private bathroom, sofas and an extra bed – so comfortable that he decided to stay with her rather than go to a hotel." Reminds me of the old days of pre-outsourced, small-town hospital cafeterias, where local cooks made food that was good enough that townspeople would actually drop by for lunch. Now it’s just surly Aramark contractors heating up Sysco TV dinner quality fare, not much different than feeding prisoners.

University of Iowa Hospitals fires one employee and suspends seven more for snooping in electronic patient records.

Vendor Deals and Announcements

• Mac enthusiasts have a new kiosk option with the release of MacPractice Kiosk Interface with signature pad.
• Wandering WiFi is now providing wireless service at six Ardent Health Services hospitals in Oklahoma and New Mexico for patient and visitor Internet access.
• Perot Systems acquires Tullurian, a managed services hosting provider serving 13,000 physicians and 565 practices. Perot, by the way, has launched healthcare service operations in China. David Miller will serve as managing director for the region’s consulting and clinical transformation services.
• Lake Charles Memorial Hospital (LA) announces the start of a $6 million, three-year process of migrating to McKesson’s Paragon and Practice Partner digital health record solutions.
• Beaver Dam Community Hospital (WI) selects McKesson’s Paragon HIS and document management solution.
• Clarian Health (IN) activates a MobileAccess Universal Wireless network across three hospitals, covering more than 4 million square feet.
• HIE SharedHealth is using Orion Health’s Concerto Portal Solution to enable an EHR solution and provide access to its Clinical Xchange platform.
• Ochsner Health Systems (LA) is installing InterSystems Progeny Anatomic Pathology information system.
• Spectrum Health (MI) selects InterSystems Ensemble software for integration initiatives across the entire enterprise.
• Passport Health Communications and SelfPay Company announce a strategic partnership to provide electronic charity care assessments.
• Charlotte, NC-based Patient Care Technology Systems is more than doubling its office space to support its growing employee base.
• DocuSys names David Young, MD medical director for its Presurgical Care Management solution. Young founded Prompte, a company acquired by DocuSys earlier this year. He is also medical director of presurgical testing at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital (IL) and a faculty member at UCSD.
• The 45-radiologist practice Radiology Associates (AR) will utilize AMICAS Web-based PACS, AMICAS Reach, and AMICAS Teleradiology solutions.
• Former Misys Transaction Services and IBAX exec Denis Connaghan is named president and CEO of etrials Worldwide, a provider of adaptive eClinical software and services.
• Clinical Solutions will integrate HLI’s Language Engine clinical decision technology into its IntefleCS Telephone Triage and IntefleCS Face to Face applications.

E-mail me.

News 11/14/08

From Some Guy: "Re: OSF. Epic signed a deal with OSF Healthcare to replace all existing systems. Can you confirm?" I knew they were a EpicCare user on the ambulatory side. Confirmation welcome.

From John Oates: "Re: Centura. Heard that Dana Moore, the CIO at Centura Health, has had his role expanded to include lab, supply chain, business intelligence, clinical quality and safety, central verification office, community benefit, the regional float pool, real estate management, system recruiting, and Ask a Nurse." They might as well rename the place after him since he’s running it all. You know you’re a good executive and not just a good IT executive when they ask you to take on a bigger role, so that’s pretty cool.

From Donna Redd: "Re: pictures. Love the pictures you run. That was the last reason to read the printed publications, so I’m all yours." Thanks. I didn’t run them before because it was a pain (thanks to Microsoft for the software solution) and because of my adserver, which overloaded with page views to the point that pictures would have taken forever to load (thanks there to adserver genius Erik in the Netherlands, who redesigned the setup and made the page load nearly instantly). I still run the pictures small or thumbnailed to keep things snappy, part of our fervor to not waste your time (including in what we write about and how we write it, which sometimes fools new readers who figure "short" must mean "unimportant," leading them to completely miss something that we scooped everybody on. Writing less is hard work.)

From The PACS Designer: "Re: iPill from Philips. As the patient starts to become a receiver of better care through increased internal treatment focus, the iPill from Philips seems to be a potential winner in the war against disease. Also, being able to include the wireless function in such a small form factor really can bring added value an more comfort to the patient." Link. The pill (capsule, really) contains a microprocessor, battery, wireless radio, drug reservoir, and manually activated pump to allow medication release in a specific location.

From Clara Barton: "Re: Allscripts. Saw an impressive demo of a new tool for prenatal documentation from Allscripts this week at the AMIA conference. It’s interoperable (‘robust API, SaaS model, uses Mirth’) and very easy to use (mirrors ACOG form perfectly). Here’s the surprise: this came from the Misys side pre-merger! So someone WAS doing cool stuff in Raleigh. No details on release date (‘soon’) … mention of an OB/GYN group in Indianapolis who has been testing it since March and is raving about it." Sounds pretty interesting. The Mirth integration engine is cool. Maybe Allscripts should buy LMS Medical Solutions to round out their OB offerings (story to follow).

A hacker gets into a University of Florida College of Dentistry server containing the PHI of 344,000 patients. Technicians upgrading the server found an exploit.

Reminder: click the Project Valour-IT graphic to your right if you would like to donate toward giving a seriously injured soldier or sailor a laptop equipped with assistive technology. Imagine having your hands blown off by an improvised bomb in Iraq. You would appreciate being able to keep writing e-mails and use a computer, right? That’s where 100% of the donated money goes (laptops, Wiis for physical therapy, and GPSs for mobility). Thanks to those of you who mentioned you donated money or, in one reader’s case, a brand new Wii. The fundraiser runs through Thanksgiving and the Army team is beating our Navy team nearly two to one.

Jobs: multiple Epic positions (CO), NextGen Customer Support (PA), Clinical Expert/Consultant, MD or RN (NJ). Just ask and Gwen will send you her weekly job blast.

MedAptus promotes William Marshall to SVO of marketing and Rick Little to executive director of client services.

The SEC files insider trading charges against McKesson sales VP William Gallahair, claiming he overheard his supervisor’s telephone conversation about the impending acquisition of D&K Health Resources, then loaded up on shares, pocketing a $120K profit when the announcement was made.

An HHS pilot project in Arizona and Utah, announced Wednesday, gives Medicare recipients two years of their health records if they agree to keep a PHR on Google, HealthTrio, NoMoreClipboard.com, or PassportMD.

Patrick McCormick, aka PatrickMD, was a student finalist at AMIA as mentioned by Grant Ritter yesterday. He writes about the Facebook Medline application created by Steven Bedrick and Dean Sittig (or at least I’m assuming it’s Dean from the citation). Interesting, but I’m finding PatrickMD himself at least equally interesting: MIT computer science grad (BS and MEng), senior platform engineer with the Tellme voiceXML startup later bought by Microsoft, Columbia MD, and now PGY-1 medical intern at Mount Sinai. All these Boston people are always doing cool stuff. Must be the long winters.

OB software vendor LMS Medical Solutions gets de-listed from the Toronto Stock Exchange when shares drop to below $0.04. They dropped another 60% today, down to $0.02. The company just filed Q2 results: revenue was up 21% to $730K US, EPS -$0.04 vs. -$0.07. Seems like someone should be interested in them at that share price.

Medicity will hold its first customer summit in Salt Lake City February 19-21. Also mentioned in the company’s latest newsletter: a presentation by Daughters of Charity CIO Dick Hutsell on rapid access to clinical information; go-live of HSHS on MediTrust and ProAccess; and customer presentations coming at HIMSS in April. And as always, thanks to Medicity and Nuance/eScription for being HIStalk’s founding sponsors, going way back to 2004 when we could have had a meeting of all HIStalk’s readers in the private dining room of an IHOP (you know who you are – thank you).

Cielo MedSolutions announces that its evidence-based treatment guidelines are available as SaaS for third-party integration with portal and EMR products.

This is cool: the folks at Vitalize Consulting Solutions read my September 29 writeup about IT volunteer Robert Schilt, who is implementing basic technology on a shoestring at Goroko General Hospital in Papua New Guinea. Vitalize sent him 13 laptops, most of which will be used in the hospital, but one will go to the first PNG blind person to graduate from college and one will benefit a local school. Here’s a list of what he could use ("PNG people do not have two spare coins to scratch together") and donations received (nearly all of them sent by his faraway family to support the locals through him, you may notice). Here’s a response left by a young PNGer: "Wow!!!! What an awesome donation! THANK YOU Vitalize Consulting Solutions.I’m looking forward to following up on where these laptops end up and what lives they will change. Unbelievable."

The health of retail pharmacy workers is threatened by automated dispensing machines in drug stores, including those made by McKesson and Parata, according to an aerosol science lab.

If you don’t get e-mail updates when Inga and I write something new, that means 3,217 people are beating you to the scoop (some of them mortal enemies and competitors, no doubt). The cure: put your e-mail address and name in the Subscribe to Updates box to your upper right. Right below that is the E-mail This to a Friend graphic, which can be clicked to easily e-mail a few buds about good old HIStalk.

Insurer WellPoint is jumping into medical tourism, offering pilot participants free treatment in India for certain non-emergent issues. They’ll even cover a companion airfare, but that’s not overly generous considering that costs are a fraction of what US hospitals charge (example: knee replacements, $8,000 vs. $70,000).

Six Web site clients of CareTech Solutions win 2008 WebAwards, including Hendricks Regional Health (IN), which took home Outstanding Web Site. It looks cheery and easy to use.

Michael Donlon, former McKesson clinical systems sales VP, joins offshore medical call center operator MediCall as VP of business development.

Chronically ill Canadians wait the longest to see a specialist among eight developed countries, the headline says. Almost: same-day appointments were equally rare in the US at 26%, with citizens of both countries heading off to the ED as a substitute. Their patient-reported medical error rate was also the highest — except for the US, which also led in the percentage of respondents who said the health system was so screwed up that it ought to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch (if you believe survey conclusions without seeing the actual instrument and methodology, anyway). 

New telemedicine vendor SwiftMD gets a contract with an entire 300-home subdivision under construction to provide emergency medical services, including 24/7 physician access by telephone, Internet, or bi-directional video and also including PHRs. The company offers direct consultations, claiming you’ll be talking to a doctor within 30 minutes of signing up. Prices: $18 to enroll, $9 a month, and $59 per consultation for one person.

First Express Scripts got extortionate threats to release PHI. Now some of its clients are getting similarly threatening letters. The company has launched a site for updates and is offering a $1 million reward for the arrest and conviction of those responsible (so it should take about two days to have someone in custody, I’m guessing).

I get a little uncomfortable when I can’t tell non-tax paying hospitals from international conglomerate vendors. UPMC partners with GE to develop international cancer centers.

Hospital layoffs: Boca Raton Community Hospital (FL); several hospitals in Hamilton, Ontario; St. John’s Regional Medical Center (MO); Cheboygan Memorial Hospital (MI).

King’s Daughters Medical Center (MS) says its T-System EDIS cut wait times in half and sped up charge posting.

The whistle-blower in the Magee-Womens Hospital case apparently wins, despite a private settlement with no details. UPMC spat out a "no comment," while the woman said she was elated. She said she raised patient safety concerns; the hospital claimed she violated patient confidentiality.

Vanity Fair magazine’s lawsuit against the Navy over John McCain’s medical records is dismissed. A reporter claimed to have interviewed first-hand sources who said McCain was involved in a 1964 auto accident that was rumored to have injured or killed another person. The magazine wanted any of his records during that time from Portsmouth Naval Hospital. The judge said the Navy was right to refuse the Freedom of Information Act request since hospital records are exempted as an invasion of privacy.

Who’s the bad guy here? A drug dealer gets a 25-year-old woman hooked on heroin. She ends up paralyzed in ICU and her family tells the dealer she’s dead to keep him away from her. Someone tells the dealer where she is and he admits himself to the same hospital, then heads to the ICU claiming to be her relative. The family finds out he’s there. One of them, a 45-year-old male nurse, is charged with using the hospital computer to find the man’s room and then threatening to break his spine. The nurse is now defending himself in a nursing board hearing on whether he’s fit to practice.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

From: Dr. J: "Re: Advisory Board. Have you assessed the value of Advisory Board Company membership for provider organizations or vendors?” Neither Mr. H nor I haven’t ever looked into it and we don’t know what membership costs. Anyone care to comment?

The Big Brothers at Google are watching your keystrokes to detect regional flu outbreaks. Using the new Google Flu Track, Google tracks the input of such phrases as “flu symptoms.” Over the last few years, Google’s search data has been able to detect regional trends about 10 days before they are reported to the CDC.

Not surprisingly, privacy advocates aren’t too hip on Google’s new tool. Patient Privacy Rights founder Dr. Deborah Peel sent us this note. “We think Google needs to prove their claims–that’s transparency. The science is there to do effective de-identification—but we have no proof that is what Google did. This is very similar to our certification requirements for how vendors use aggregated de-identified info for business purposes such as improving how the site works, etc.” Peel also provided us a copy of the letter that she and EPIC.org president Marc Rotenberg sent to Google Inc.’s CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt.

Singapore’s largest healthcare group SingHealth has successfully activated Eclipsys’ clinical solutions. Within the first few hours, 1,500+ concurrent users were live across three hospitals and 12 clinics.

Medsphere signs a $9.7 million contract to provide support, maintenance and development for the Indian Health Service. The agreement extends Medsphere’s existing relationship supporting the agency’s Resource Patient Management EHR solution.

Speaking of Medsphere, ousted co-founder Scott Shreeve shares his recollections of the company’s early days and up until the time of the new regime. Scott and his brother Steve are winners of the 2008 Linux Medical News Freedom Award, based on their support of Free/Open source software ideals in medicine.

I inadvertently found this blog today and of course was drawn to the photos of the two adorable Hungarian medical students maintaining it. I know next to nothing about the fascinating world of radiology and nuclear medicine, but I could learn.

The VA contracts with HITT Contracting for a $32 million regional data center in West Virginia on the same grounds as the Martinsburg VA Medical Center.

The campus newspaper provides an update to KU’s transition to Epic’s EMR.

Twenty small hospitals across Kansas and Nebraska are sharing a single computer infrastructure to automate their patient medical records. Funding comes from the US Department of Agriculture and the nonprofit Great Plains Health Alliance.

InterSystems is opening a sales and support office in Dubai Healthcare City following an acquisition of key assets and staff from local distributor HBO Middle East.

UT Systems orders the layoff of 3,800 state employees at UTMB, claiming the medical branch is losing $40 million a month as a result of Hurricane Ike. Damage has forced the main Galveston hospital to be closed for renovations, though the medical school has re-opened. The layoffs represent nearly a third of UTMB’s 12,000 employees. UTMB is also the island’s largest employer.

Merge Healthcare is offering a new iPhone/iPod touch application that allows users to view digital medical images on their devices. A demo of Merge Mobile for the iPhone is free from the iPhone App Store, so I plan to load it up and check it out.

A Houston doctor sets up Telerays, a Web-based auction service that facilitates radiology interpretation services. Using an eBay-like model, hospitals or imaging centers can put up certain radiology/interpretation projects for bid. The (approved and properly credentialed) radiologist with the lowest bid wins. The hospital pays Telerays, who in turn pays the radiologist. Interesting financial model, though it does suggest all radiologists are equally skilled. When the company expands to plastic surgery, I think I’ll take a pass.

A Louisiana medical assistant is arrested on 342 counts of obtaining prescription drugs by fraud. Her suspecting doctor hired a computer expert to audit her computer and found numerous prescriptions generated without accessing a patient’s chart and that were later deleted (what EMR allows you to do that?) She’s accused of obtaining more than 20,000 tablets of various drugs and claims she took 20-30 pills herself each day. 

Aruba’s only hospital, Dr. Horacio E. Oduber, is implementing Cerner Millennium beginning in March. I bet there are a few Kansas City folks trying to get in on that gig.

CCHIT announces the certification of four new inpatient and ED and EHR products. In addition, Epic Enterprise Clinical system was certified as providing a comprehensive and interoperable ambulatory, inpatient, and ED solution.

E-mail Inga.

News 11/12/08

From The PACS Designer: "Re: digitally connected patient. TPD last year made HIStalkers aware of a new method being developed to capture patient information from remote locations. The first applications were seen in ambulances where patient info was sent to the hospital while transporting the patient. The Digitally Connected Patient or DCP provides caregivers with information about the patient’s condition and warns when conditions change that can cause harm to the patient. Now, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation has partnered with Microsoft on a pilot study to send patient data from the home to the hospital’s eCleveland Clinic MyChart and then to HealthVault to provide a more complete PHR of the patient experience." Link.

From A CSC Executive: "Re: NPfIT. You mentioned that CSC, Accenture, and Fujitsu slunk away from NPfIT. Could you update the note to remove the CSC? As the article mentions, CSC is still one of the major contractors and we took over additional responsibility when we picked up Accenture’s regions." My apologies. I’ve corrected that slip-up. Accenture and Fujitsu bailed out, but CSC is running a big piece of the project and not complaining about it as far as I know.

From Doogie Howitzer: "Re: Digital HealthCare & Productivity. It’s going down the tubes after two more issues." I can’t say I’ve ever read it either online or on paper, but maybe someone will miss it.

From Lou Loomis: "Re: Microsoft. In reference to your news on 11/7 about Microsoft, the attached was taken last weekend in Toronto. Several of us watched as the billboard operator added some patches to his Windows PC, rebooted, and then started the billboard software again. For reference, this billboard was about 3 stories high!!"

From Ouch: "Re: MEDITECH’s financials." Link. Q3 revenue was up, but net income went from a $27 million gain to a $21 million loss as the company wrote off $50 million worth of investment securities with permanently impaired value (maybe someone who was better in accounting class can help me interpret their numbers, which seem to look good other than the investment hit).

From FormerCT: "Re: layoff. Heard that HealthPort, formerely Companion Technologies, recently held another round of layoffs, its second since August, in an effort to improve the bottom line. The investors paid $40 million to buy Companion from Blue Cross and are having trouble turning a profit, let alone a return." Unverified.

From Stuck: "Re: Sage Healthcare. Mark Ryan, senior VP of customer services and support, has resigned." Unverified. He’s still on their Web page.

From Brother Windy: "Re: wherethemoneygoes.com. Any idea what happened to it?" The author of the site that railed against the financial excesses of non-profit hospitals, a caustic former Chicago reporter nicknamed Low Blow Joe, was outed as a paid shill for insurance big shot and health savings accounts advocate J. Patrick Rooney, who died in September. He also ran a vicious anti-Obama site for Rooney. Without Rooney’s paycheck, the site is apparently defunct.

From Wompa1: "Re: WHO report on world healthcare. This excellent analysis from The Cato Institute puts armchair musings to shame." Link (warning: PDF).

Proof that newspapers are not only getting skinnier, they’re also getting sloppier. This business journal story covers a local hospital’s EMR implementation, managing to (a) not give the hospital’s name except as ‘Harrison’ (it’s Harrison Medical Center); (b) not provide a location for either the hospital or the publication itself, except to say Kitsap (it’s in Bremerton, WA); and (c) not spell the vendor’s name correctly (Eclypsis instead of Eclipsys).

I mentioned that Sonitor was one of a handful of technologies that impressed me at HIMSS (disclaimer: they’re a sponsor now, but weren’t then). Anyway, I ran across the interesting slide above on RTLS opportunities from products like theirs.

I mentioned a few days back that I kind of liked Carol, "the Travelocity of healthcare," even though I’m totally unsold on all the brash consumer-driven healthcare startups trying to cash out before the bubble bursts again altruistically improve society’s health through consumer empowerment. Anyway, Carol cuts a fourth of its staff and changes its business model to focus on provider consulting and software, ditching the idea of letting consumers compare providers themselves. There’s $30 million in VC money shot to hell.

DR Systems claims it invented PACS and is going after other vendors, claiming patent infringement. Want to know what it costs to make them go away? Now you do: Emageon’s 10-Q says they paid DR Systems $1 million (it looks like a deal at $1,000 until you realize they’re omitting thousands).

Healthia Consulting, the force behind what some folks called the hottest event at HIMSS (the HIStalk party), will be rebranded under the Ingenix Consulting banner. Ingenix now has over 1,000 consultants from its several acquisitions and is serving providers, employers, insurers, pharma, and the public sector. Check out (and click) their new ad to your left to review their offerings.

The CEO and IT Director of 24-bed Eastern Plumas Health Care (CA) make a board pitch (unanimously approved) for a clinical system from Dairyland Healthcare Solutions (now called Healthland). Total cost with software, hardware, and implementation will be $322,500.

Scripps Health (CA) interim CIO Patric Thomas gets the job permanently.

Capsule announces 10 new DataCaptor medical device connectivity sales.

Patricia Lavely of Memorial University Medical Center is named CIO of the Year by the Georgia CIO Leadership Association.

Premise gets some big-name new customers for its patient flow solutions: Children’s Hospital Boston, Hospital for Special Surgery, and UCSF Medical Center.

IBA’s iSoft announces the launch of its Lorenzo system to the rest of the non-NPfIT world, taking shots at Cerner and other vendors in the press release. IBA says the potential market is in the billions and it expects to double revenue as a result.

The White Stone Group, which offers systems that document and track the business and clinical communications of hospitals, gets a nice profile in the Knoxville business paper.

The Longstreet Clinic, PC of Gainesville, GA wins a statewide e-Technology Award for its EMR implementation.

Catholic Health Initiatives will implement NCR’s MediKiosks to reduce patient wait time.

UPMC will use its patient database to create a voluntary registry for patients to be alerted about clinical trials.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on ICD-10 in an article called Why We Need 1,170 Codes for Angioplasty. They seem to conclude that it’s cumbersome but probably necessary given the limits of ICD-9.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

From Lola Falana: “Re: HCIT funding. MDs could buck up and do CPOE. The now-tired ‘time is money’ excuse ignores that they have the equivalent of a gun in their hand with paper orders. They could come on board tomorrow at zero cost to them and get back the OE time with order sets, reduced calls, and other time-wasters. The culture is already changing with younger clinicians and increasingly onerous third-party, data-intensive reporting for compliance and reimbursement. I know MDs want subsidies, but let’s start with what we can do now with CPOE and Stark. We can adopt a patient safety culture without waiting for Barack. The whole country, including HCIT, needs change.” I agree that mandates may be the answer, though nominal penalties like 2% probably won’t be enough.

AARP, Business Roundtable, Service Employees Union, and National Federation of Independent Business send an open letter urging President-elect Obama and Congress to build on the SCHIP, to promote preventive care, and to advance HIT adoption. The four groups are part of an organization called Divided We Fail, aimed at promoting healthcare reform now.

A report concludes that excess installed capacity and initiatives to reduce health care costs will negatively affect sales of CT systems, MRI, and nuclear medicine scanners over the next five years.

A study finds that when patients receive treatment alerts along with their physicians, compliance increases by 12.5%, with the greatest improvement in diagnostic recommendations.

St. David’s HealthCare (TX) blames the economic downturn on its decision to lay off 50 employees in non-bedside, non-patient care areas.

The Ventura County, CA newspaper reports that the local county clinic system had 44,000 more patients in the last year while hospital procedures are down about 9% over last year.

Another sign of the times: Starbucks reports a 97% fall in profit (and a 50% drop in stock price over the last year). I’m not sure I could carry on if I didn’t know I could find a Starbucks within a five-minute drive just about anywhere I am, so I hope Howard Schultz figures it out.

Amid pressure from clinical staff critical of his management style, Northeast Health Systems (MA) CEO Stephen Laverty resigns. According to the Wicked Local Gloucester (great name for a newspaper), Laverty was focused on advancing HIT at this 100 Top Hospital. During his eight-year tenure, the hospital implemented a number of new technologies, including PACS, CPOE, and voice recognition.

Biopharmaceutical company Favrille and PHR developer MyMedicalRecords announce a merger.

ACS gets a $44 million deal to provide business outsourcing services for Florida Medicaid. ACS will be tasked with helping the agency save money on Medicaid bills by identifying possible private insurers.

Doctors in California, Nevada, and Hawaii claim that Medicare is late in paying them millions of dollars. The problems stem from May’s changeover to UPINs and September switch to a new claims processor.

E-mail Inga.

Veterans Day

Freedom is not free – thank a soldier or veteran and remember those who have given their lives. If you’re a veteran, on active duty, or serving in the reserves or National Guard, thank you.

In Flanders Fields
By John McCrae

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Help a Wounded Veteran Recover

I like to think my problems are important, but only until I remember those soldiers who are coming back from terrible struggles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other far-flung parts of the world. Kids are coming home horribly maimed and disfigured before they even had a chance to experience normal adult life. Despite their ruinous injuries, they might even consider themselves lucky because, unlike some of their fellow soldiers, they made it back.

I was struck today when I accidentally ran across Project Valour-IT, which is run by Soldiers’ Angels. The nonprofit group’s motto is, "May No Soldier Go Unloved." The project, originally named as Voice-Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops, supports severely wounded soldiers by providing them with voice-controlled laptops, whole-body video games for physical therapy rehabilitation, and personal GPS devices to help them relearn mobility with their impairments and physical challenges.

Donations go 100% toward the laptops – nobody in Soldiers’ Angels gets paid. They received this from a grateful soldier: "To Whom It May Concern, Hello, my name is LCpl. Andrew. I am a Marine that was wounded in Iraq and got medevaced to Brooke Army Medical Center in Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. I recently received a laptop. I was informed that it was you, the Soldier’s Angels that donated it. I can’t tell you how thankful I am to have support from organizations such as yourself. It really lets me know that there are people out there that still care about the troops and what they are sacrificing for this country. I appreciate what you have done for me and having this laptop is actually good therapy for my hand. Once again thank you and I am proud to serve this country knowing there are people like you that I am protecting. Sincerely, Andrew."

I was moved to do two things today. First, I donated $800 (anonymously), the amount needed to fully fund a soldier’s laptop. I spoke to the founder and she assures me it will be put to great use in one of the military hospitals. In fact, she invited me to visit either Bethesda or Brooke Army Medical Center to present it myself. If you want to donate that tax-deductible amount, you are also welcome to correspond or visit the recipient to encourage his or her recovery through moral support. They get a great deal from Best Buy on state-of-the-art laptops with all the assistive technology installed, ready for immediate use (she wanted me to thank Nuance for helping them out in the past with Dragon Naturally Speaking discounts, so here’s a shout out to them).

Second, Project Valour-IT is running a blog contest from now (Veterans Day) until Thanksgiving. You can donate any amount to help the cause. Donations aren’t tracked by blog, but rather by teams representing each military branch (it’s actually just for fun since all the money goes into the same pool, but it does spark friendly rivalries). I chose the Navy Team because: (a) I have been to Navy football games and the Midshipmen are the most disciplined and respectful students I’ve ever seen; (b) I will argue passionately that the Naval Academy is not only the most beautiful campus in the country, but is also in the top handful of colleges academically and competitively and maybe #1 when you count leadership; (c) Mrs. HIStalk’s father was a Marine; and (d) I can say I know a Navy Rear Admiral, Cindy Dullea of SCI Solutions. OK, it’s sketchy logic, but I had to pick one of the branches, so there you go.

If you would like to help Project Valour-IT, click the fundraising graphic I put up on your right, which will take you to a donation screen. Donate $250 or more and you’ll get a special gift. And, since I can’t see the donations and they aren’t tracked separately for HIStalk, please post a comment on this article (click the Comments link at the bottom) and just mention that you helped them out. Thank you for your support.

Monday Morning Update 11/10/08

From The PACS Designer: "Re: cloud slices. You’re going to be hearing segments of cloud usage described as a ‘Slices’. Since clouds are an SaaS offering, they contain numerous parts, some of which may not be needed by the service requester.  ince you may select a portion of that service, it gets defined as a thick or thin slice. If you design your application with several slices from different service providers, you are in effect creating what TPD would call a ‘Dagwood sandwich’.  Using these various slices is similar to using a utility for your service, and cloud usage is charged using the term ‘elastic compute unit’ or ECU, much like what you would pay for electricity through the use of kilowatts." Link.

From Aaron Rentz: "Re: Certify Data Systems. Has anyone heard of them? Their site (which needs some grammar revision) sounds like they have the ultimate interoperability machine. I don’t see how their technology could work as well as they claim out of the box, but it looks like they have clients." Link. They’re awfully secretive: no names of anyone involved are mentioned and the street address is used by a bunch of companies (right down the street from the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose). It’s a Ricoh Japan incubator spinoff.

From Lil’ Kimchi: "Re: athena CEO on CNBC. Great earnings, talks about Obama and HIT." Link.

Columbia University Medical Center and NLP International Corporation announce that the MedLEE natural language text processing application will be brought to market. It processes unstructured medical text, with a demo here.

Steve Lieber of HIMSS defends having the European Commission choose it (an American organization) as its eHealth conference partner. "We are not a US organisation. I mean we are a legal entity in Belgium as well as a US corporation … We established our legal presence in Europe because we want to avoid people thinking that there is a bunch of Americans trying to take over European eHealth policy or practice."

The Royal Free Hospital in London claims it lost $11 million in six months because of the "clunky workflows" of its Cerner Millennium build.

QuadraMed announces Q3 numbers: revenue up 17%, EPS $0.12 vs. $0.19.

Perot Systems retires the JJWild name. The MEDITECH consulting group is now just Perot Systems.

Accenture and Fujitsu slunk away from NPfIT after losing their shirts. Speculation is that BT is bleeding too, after the company announces poor Global Services division profits.

The first digital diagnostic system for Chinese traditional medicine is being tested.

It’s not electronic like Neal’s "tick, tock" rant, but a Georgia pediatrician sends an eerily similar (but paper-based) memo to employees of the medical practice she founded. It started with the title "War Declared," leading off with "since slackers have declared war on me by electing evil incarnate as president and guaranteeing that our business will never again expand, i will respond by declaring my own war on slackers." The doctor quit the next day, saying the memo was "simply stupid."

GE Healthcare is an investor in a $100 million private equity fund in Saudi Arabia.

University of Michigan Health System implements a hiring freeze. Imagine the Michigan economy if Ford or GM goes belly-up, which looks entirely possible.

A political group in South Africa wants the health minister to investigate the performance of hospital CEOs, which are hired by political appointment, observing that the experience of some of them is in politics, not management or healthcare.

Houston police are investigating the theft of backup tapes from Christus Health Care System, stolen from an employee’s car. Why they were there wasn’t mentioned.

The FBI is investigating an extortion threat against Express Scripts. The company received a letter in early October with personal information on several dozen patients, threatening to expose similar information on millions more patients if an unnamed sum of money isn’t paid.

Struggling Canadian OB system vendor LMS Medical System announces a "strategic restructuring," later more specifically defined as a 50% layoff.

Cook County’s hospitals bring in MedAssets to performing upfront financial counseling for patients.

Magee-Women’s Hospital (PA), defending itself in lawsuits from pathologists who claimed their names were signed to lab reports they hadn’t seen, blames its IT department for botching a system conversion. "The (Information Technology) department didn’t consult with pathology before they came up with the program. They created the fix themselves."

Laying off: imaging software vendor Vital Images. The company swung to an earnings loss in Q3, announced Thursday, and cut 11% of staff.

Vendor Deals and Announcements

• FQHC Horizon health Center (NJ) selects eClinicalworks EMR/PM solution for its 20+ physician group. http://www.eclinicalworks.com/2008-11-3bpr.php Tufts Medical Center and the New England Quality Care Alliance (Tuft’s physician network) have also selected eCW for the academic and community settings. eCW’s PM/EMR will be offered to the 900 affiliated physicians.
• SourceMedical announces the release of its Vision 2.6 version for ambulatory surgery centers.
• Dr. Jeffrey Wajda, VP of clinical services at LYNX Medical Systems, is appointed to the national reimbursement committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
• The Hospital for Special Surgery (NY) purchases Mediware’s BiologicCare product.
• 7 Medical, a provider of on-demand PACS and EMR solutions, is honored with an award for superior technology advancement and leadership in Minnesota.
• IntrinsiQ’s IntelliDose solution is selected by Cancer Center of South Florida to manage chemo treatments.
• Wolters Kluwer Health names Robert Becker its new president and CEO, replacing Jeff McCauley, who left this summer. Becker has been Kluwer’s Law and Business division global CEO for the last five years.
• Emtec introduces a mobile clinical workstation solution that integrates smart cards, thin-client computing, and mobile workstations. The solution also enables clinicians to access their personal computer desktop on other computers in a facility.
• Methodist Medical Centre (IL) deploys GE Carescape, GE Healthcare’s wireless platform.
• SAIC is awarded a $56 million contract to provide software and engineering services for VistA’s health data repositories program.
• Oconee Medical Center (SC) announces they’ve eliminated all serious five rights-related medication administration errors as the result of implementing IntelliDOT’s BMA.
• Compuware is providing the electronic connectivity infrastructure to permit clinical information sharing among Michigan’s Thumb Health Information System HIE.
• Streamline Health CFO Paul W. Bridge, Jr. resigns effective immediately, following notification that the contract for his current term ending January 31, 2009 would not be renewed. Bridge had been with Streamline for 12 years.
• Eight-provider Cardiovascular Associates of Mesa (AZ) selects Ingenious Med’s inpatient revenue cycle management solution.
• Huron Consulting Group is beefing up its healthcare practice group with the addition of 35-year consulting veteran Robert E. Wilson and the transfer of managing director Dirk VerMeulen to the company’s Health and Education Consulting practice.
• The VA is increasing its existing contract with InterSystems and partner Four Points Technology by an additional $2.8 million. The original contract amount was $34.9 million.
• Motion Computing touts the successful implementation of its devices with Allscripts Enterprise EHR at the 230 provider Springfield Clinic (IL.) Once fully deployed over the next few months, the clinic will have over 800 tablets and 1,000 docking stations.
• Patient Care Technology Systems announces Jaime Ojeda is its new VP of sales and business development. Ojeda has spent the last 15 years at 3M.

E-mail me.

News 11/7/08

From Booger: "Re: ACS. Heard through the grapevine – Charles Bracken, managing director of healthcare solutions at ACS, will be the new CIO of Catholic Health Initiatives." All I’ve heard is that Witt/Kieffer is doing the search.

From Mr. Rev Man: "Re: development cost. Does anyone know much money has been spent to date on R&D for Cerner’s ProFit and Siemens HIS Soarian products? We always hear about how much is being spent on clinical software solutions, but not much is known about the these products."

Mac at Sales Lead Insights has written up the results of my marketing survey. And speaking of that, the folks at Intellect Resources are putting together a forum addressing the impact economic conditions on the industry. They invite everyone (providers, payors, consultants, vendors, etc.) to report their company’s experience and outlook in their short survey, in which you may also volunteer to participate as a guest panelist or online forum attendee. I’ll have the results here, so it should be a good read on what’s going on.

A couple of folks e-mailed to tell me they nominated me for some survey that Healthcare IT News is doing on "who stirred up the industry" in 2008. There’s no way that they would let me win even if I got the majority of votes given their regularly expressed contempt for HIStalk, but thanks for the thought.

Jobs: Information Systems Director (WA), PharmNet Project Manager (no relo needed), HL7 Integration Architect (AZ).

The private equity company that owns 26% of IBA Health Group says it will remain a backer despite this week’s $1.1 billion collapse of its parent company. And speaking of IBA, the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust is the first trust in England to go live on Lorenzo, developed by iSoft before that company’s acquisition by IBA last year. That’s a pretty big deal since the implementation is three years late, but it’s still a key part of NPfIT (which could use some good news right about now).

Health Robotics signs a big deal in the Middle East its IV automation technology (it competes with RIVA if you follow them, which I do). The deal includes 32 of its chemo-compounding "robots" and 175 of its non-chemo compounders. I see the company also has signed deals with University of Colorado Health System, University of Michigan, and Jackson Health System, so it’s looking pretty hot. I also know some of the US-based execs, as I found out when checking the company a bit further: former Eclipsys executives Peter Camp and Jack Risenhoover work there now.
 

Welcome and thanks to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Sunquest Information Systems of Tucson, AZ. Everybody knows them, of course, as a big player lab and rad, now expanding into Europe. It’s very cool that they decided to support HIStalk and I appreciate it. If you’d like to say thanks as well, click on their ad to your left and check out their offerings. As I’ve said before, it’s great to have the Sunquest name and company back.

Microsoft HUG will open membership up to those in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Which reminded me of a caustic-but-funny story I read in The Onion entitled Microsoft Ad Campaign Crashing Nation’s Televisions. "WASHINGTON—According to an FCC report released Monday, a new $300 million Microsoft ad campaign is responsible for causing televisions all across the country to unexpectedly crash … The new ad campaign, which features footage of everyday Americans using PCs, was launched as an upgrade to the poorly performing Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates commercials, which suffered unspecified failures in two-thirds of U.S. households. Microsoft pulled the defective ads in mid-September, but the move came too late, as countless televisions had already been infected with viruses and spyware … Recent frustrations with Microsoft have not been limited to its television ads, however. Earlier this week, a billboard promoting the company’s latest Windows platform angered hundreds in Detroit when it fell onto three cars, instantly killing all passengers."

Speaking of Microsoft, the company is offering Web start-ups Visual Studio, SQL Server, SharePoint, BizTalk, and Windows Server free … for three years (so it’s like open source, but only if your business goes down the tubes fast). Anyway, an early taker was doctor booking site ZocDoc, which I believe I’ve mentioned in the past. More info here.

And speaking of Microsoft yet again, the company raises some hackles by naming a programming language it’s working on M, apparently unaware that the name is a synonym for healthcare language MUMPS, which powers probably 80% of the HIT implementations out there, including those from MEDITECH, Epic, QuadraMed, and many others (courtesy of its inventor, MEDITECH’s genius Neil Pappalardo and the Mass General crew under Octo Barnett in the 60s). Microsoft’s Windows-only offering, part of its Oslo compiled .NET strategy, is supposed to be part of Visual Studio 2010. They say the name’s not final anyway.

Long Beach Memorial Medical Center CEO Terry Belmont quits. 

Infection control software developed by Tel Aviv University reduced hospital epidemics by 45%.

Axolotl’s Elysium e-prescribing solution earns SureScripts-RxHub Medication History certification.

I don’t know how I missed this: Dan Kinsella, healthcare practice VP with The Revere Group, has a blog called Healthcare IT Insights. The company was at the just-concluded Midwest HIMSS 2008 Fall Technology Conference, which I see has posted the presentations online.

A remote hospital in Canada, unable to find a pharmacist, signs up for a telepharmacy program in which a remote pharmacist will review and enter medication orders, also visiting once a month.

The Advisory Board Company’s Q2 numbers: revenue up 7%, EPS $0.32 vs. $0.45, with the CEO fretting about "member uncertainty about the budget outlook for 2009." Still, raking in $58 million from hospitals in one quarter is pretty darned good.

McKesson adds Swissray as its digital radiography partner.

George Washington University Hospital will implement clinical documentation from Baltimore-based Salar. I wrote about them in 2005, saying, "UPMC latches onto yet another early-stage healthcare technology: remote concurrent coding from a company I’ve never heard of: Salar. The CEO looks to be almost old enough to drive." Their client list now also includes Hopkins and UMass. It looks like a portable forms-style electronic system that overlays common clinical systems.

The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (OH) develops software for a Virtual Microscopy Microarray, a personalized medicine technology that will allow Internet-based virtual teams of pathologists to review microscopic tumor scans and their genetic underpinnings to develop patient-specific treatment plans.

Emageon drew two bids last month other than the $3 per share successful one from Health Systems Solutions to buy the company, one for $2.20 and the other for $2.45.

A computer glitch with the Florida Healthy Kids low-cost health insurance program causes thousands of children to be dropped from the program. The state blames ACS, which got an five-year, $87 million maintenance contract this year, for incorrectly migrating data to a new system.

CMS moves its January 1 ban on faxed prescriptions until 2012 "in the interest of patient care and safety and to encourage prescribers and dispensers to adopt e-prescribing." That helps e-prescribing, oddly enough, since some EMRs can only send prescriptions by fax and doctors would have simply gone back to paper.

Saudi Arabia gears up to provide for the health needs of 3 million participants in December’s Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. The ministry of health will have 10,000 health care workers on the job, providing medical care, vaccinations, and emergency treatment, and also using computer links to hospitals and pharmacies to check resource availability.

The lawsuit involving a former Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC medical records worker is underway. The hospital says they received two patient complaints that the secretary had leaked medical information. She says the hospital was upset because she provided records as requested to a pathologist who is suing the hospital, claiming that pathologists’ signatures were being attached to records they had not reviewed.

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

The election is over and so far, the country’s problems haven’t been solved, nor has the sky fallen! The news channels will have to discuss something besides the latest polling results or which candidate went off script. I personally am looking forward to more coverage on Michelle Obama’s style selections. Analysts have now turned towards educating the rest of us on what the election results really mean, including how HIT will be impacted. Obama says he wants to spend $50 billion over the next five years to upgrade the healthcare technology infrastructure, which would provide particular benefit to vendors supplying EMRs and e-RXs. Supposedly most of the money would go to those physicians who have claimed current solutions are too costly. Personally I am left wondering 1) if such a proposal will actually be approved; 2) if $50 billion will be enough; and 3) if physicians will use the technology even if it is free.

AT&T is acquiring Wi-Fi service provider Wayport for $275 million in cash. Wayport provides hotspots for a number of healthcare systems (including HealthSouth, Inova, and Sun Healthcare) as well as hotels, airports, and McDonalds. With the purchase, AT&T’s Wi-Fi footprint will be expanding to almost 20,000 hotspots domestically. I’m pretty psyched that I can do some serious downloads on my iPhone for free while eating fries and a Big Mac!

Sentillion CTO David Fusari will be a featured speaker at Gartner’s Identity & Access Management Summit next week in Orlando.

Sonitor Technologies and JAOtech are partnering up to allow JAOtech’s multimedia terminals to be equipped with Sonitor’s ultrasound receivers. The solution allows the terminals to form the nodes for a hospital’s indoor position system.

I saw this announcement regarding nine-physician Durango Orthopedic Associates’ selection of SRS for its EMR solution and recall chatting with the SRS guys at MGMA. One rep told me very sincerely that SRS has “never” lost a client. I’ve pondered that a few times over the last couple of weeks and have wondered if it really is possible to please all your clients forever.

Vista Equity Partners, the VC firm that purchased Sunquest last year for $382 million, has announced the closure of its Vista Equity Partners Fund III with approximately $1.3 billion in capital commitments.

Lots of companies are announcing their third-quarter earnings. If the sampling below is any indication, organizations that rely of direct patient payment appear to be struggling more than the HIT vendors. Will the affects of a weaker economy trickle down to the vendors by the end of year? Or, perhaps vendors won’t see much change until 2009, when most organizations are following a (likely tighter) 2009 budget.

Rehab services provider HealthSouth announces a 98% drop in income for Q3 compared to last year. However, revenue increased about 7% to $456 million. Earnings were better than anticipated and the company expects the full-year earnings will exceed its forecast. HealthSouth attributes the low income number to the $17.1 million charge related to its litigation with UBS Securities.

Tenet Healthcare fell short of analyst projections with its $2.2 billion revenue posting for Q3. Earnings were $104 million, up from a net loss of $59 million last year. Tenet predicts 2008 total earnings will be between break even to $75 million. The stock price has fallen almost $2 this week to $2.48/share.

Perot Systems also saw a decline in its stock prices after predicting a slower Q4. Results for Q3 were on target and included a 9% rise in revenue and a 25% jump in income compared to last year. So far this week Perot’s stock has slid 20%, closing at $11.48 today.

athenahealth beats estimates with its third-quarter revenue growth of 35%. Non-GAAP adjusted net income grew from $2.1 million last year to $4.8 million and EPS was $.14.

Eclipsys also saw good growth with a 9% increase in revenues and a 36% jump in non-GAAP net income that was in line with analysts’ $.30/share projections.

The eClinicalworks folks forwarded me this link to Dr. Greg Hinton’s blog postings on this week’s user group meeting. Sounds like one of the lighter moments occurred on Election Day at the start of a presentation by Dr. Farzad Mostashari, who is chairman of the Primary Information Taskforce. Mostashari’s “Top Ten Reasons Why eCW and Girish are Similar to Barack Obama” was apparently a big hit.

E-mail Inga.