Today’s show starts out with some awesome music from an artist I just heard of and purchased his latest album after listening to a song on the radio in the rental Mustang in Kauai.  You can find more of his music at http://www.jasonmraz.com. 

Listen to today’s show for the latest news and events in health IT and observations made between the healthcare and the airline industries.

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The following articles are referenced on the “In the News” section of today’s podcast.  Also, the various “upcoming events” can be found in the upcoming events section of this page.

U.S. Government to Encrypt 800,000 Laptops

Spint Nextel to Limit their “Unlimited” Data Plan

Venitian Hotel Network

CCHIT Releases New Ambulatory EHR Criteria

PLEASE…I need you to get the information out to your vendors and have them contact me at spencer@itpodcast.org so we can set up a time to talk with them.

If you want to add this link to your Google homepage, please click here:

The following articles are referenced on the “In the News” section of today’s podcast.

Cisco to Phase-Out Linksys Brand

H-1B Visa Quota Met

Testimony to Congress that we need 40,000 more Health IT Professionals

The next podcast will be produced and released on May 3, 2008.

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In the news features of this podcast I reference the following articles…

Excel patch causes bad math

iPhone to release enterprise grade features

New high-def DVD player enters the market

Microsoft makes IE 8 beta available

YouTube knocked offline by Pakistan

Network Solutions sued over domain name registration policies

Thank you for listening. Please send information about this podcast onto your current HIS vendors and let them know that I would like them to appear on itpodcast.org. The next show will be released on March 29, 2008.

Being that the majority of my experiences have been in the community hospital market, I tend to give a lot of attention to “Integrated” hospital information systems.  When I talk with other CIO’s about these types of systems, I always hear comments about Meditech.  Just so you know, I have used Meditech MAGIC, Meditech C/S and even used the Columbia / HCA variant of Meditech.  At one time, I was a huge proponent of the Meditech system.  Although I never liked the look the software presented to the end user, I found the system reliable and fairly easy to manage.

 I have expanded my horizons a bit in the integrated HIS market over the past few years and there have some really nice developments in the marketplace.  Currently, at San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center (SLVRMC) where I am CIO, we are using McKesson’s Paragon HIS.  This system has impressed me more than just about any of the other systems that I have seen lately.  What is interesting is that when I was recruited to SLV Regional Medical Center, the executive team hired me because of my experience with Meditech C/S and Magic.  The executive team was disenchanted with Paragon and wanted to pull it and install something more “capable”.

What I found was that the system was a poor installation, not poor software.  I was nervous about what I was going to do to get this system working, because my experience with McKesson in the past was limited to Methodist Healthcare, where we were primarily a McKesson HealthQuest and Horizon shop.  The system was so complex that it required approximately 200 IT staff, numerous interface engineers, and we always seemed to be in the middle fixing some sort of interface “emergency”.  And god help you if you needed assistance from McKesson, because they were going to nickle and dime you for everything you were worth.  I never could figure out just what our maintenance dollars covered.

What I learned was that McKesson is like Ford Motor Company.  Ford is a huge company, and you can buy a Ford Festiva, an F150 pickup, a Lincoln Navigator, a Volvo S80, or a Land Rover Range Rover…but regardless of what you buy, you purchase a Ford.  Likewise, the quality of vehicle between the Ford Festiva and the Range Rover is completely different.  When you go for service, chances are you will have a different experience when you take in your F150 versus when you take in your Volvo S80. 

What I learned was that McKesson is the same way.  McKesson Provider Technologies has Healthquest, Series, STAR, and Paragon all as “hospital information systems”, each with its own market target.  Just like with the Ford example, the service experience is quite different between the various products.

McKesson’s Paragon group is completely different than my experiences with HealthQuest and Horizon.  I have a single group to contact for problems, they are responsible for any internal conversations that need to occur, and probably 90% of my issues are covered under my annual maintenance agreement.  I also get a Microsoft based product that runs on Microsoft SQL, only requires 4 servers to run both my test and live environments, and actually has a viable plan on keeping up with technology.