Volume 3 - Issue 8 - December 2008

Editor's Note

By: Donna Carroll
Editor - The MEDITECH Community Bulletin
VP, Business Development & Recruitment - Systems Personnel

I hope everyone enjoyed a safe and happy Thanksgiving, and I'm sure most of you are getting ready for a hectic holiday season with family, friends, and activities! Like you, I turn my focus to family at this time of the year and like to spend any free time I have with them at special holiday events rather than at my computer. Therefore, we will not be publishing a January issue of The MEDITECH Community Bulletin.

Although I won't be producing the newsletter in the next month, I will definitely be working. So, if you have any needs whatsoever, please don't hesitate to call me at 413-569-1111. I'll be happy to discuss whatever is on your mind--staffing needs, career opportunities, or articles for a future newsletter.

Finally, I’d like to thank you for your continued support over the past 19 years that SYSTEMS PERSONNEL has been in business. We look forward to serving your needs in 2009 and beyond!

Best wishes for a most enjoyable season,
Happy Holidays!

Regards,
Donna

Industry Spotlight: Workforce Planning for 2009

By: Debbie Fledderjohann, President, Top Echelon Contracting, Inc.
& Donna Carroll, VP of Business Development & Recruitment, Systems Personnel

A lot has changed in the course of a year, at least as it pertains to the U.S. economy. Twelve months ago, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were still operating independently of the government, Bear Stearns was still in existence, and Ford and GM were still in good financial health. Now, though, we’re all too familiar with the current state of events and how those events are affecting the workforce. Which leads to this question: what are your workforce planning needs for the coming year? Not only that, might there be a more effective way to address those needs than you have in the past?

Workforce planning can be defined as a company’s efforts to accurately analyze their current staffing situation and then determine what adjustments need to be made in order to meet any needs or challenges they might be facing. There are a few major components of workforce planning, which are listed below:

• Ensuring that budget guidelines for employees are met

• Ensuring that there are the proper number of employees on staff

• Ensuring that those employees possess the necessary skills, knowledge, and abilities

• Ensuring that the employees are filling the correct positions (i.e., those that are best suited to their skills)

The current economic conditions in the country notwithstanding, there are a number of other reasons why workforce planning has become essential for the healthcare Information Technology (IT) industry:

1. Patient safety initiatives have created the need to implement advanced clinical applications for use by clinical staff (nurses, physicians, allied health professionals). Advanced clinical applications can help to streamline nurse workloads and incorporate clinical decision support tools that ensure safety, creating a quality environment for patients. As a result of advanced clinical application implementations, the need for qualified Health Care Information Systems (HCIS) professionals is growing as healthcare providers recognize the need for candidates with the specific software knowledge as well as a clinical background.

2. The growth of the healthcare IT industry has made competition for HCIS skilled professionals more fierce than at any time in the country’s history. Combine this with the fact that the Baby Boomer Generation, 77 million strong, is beginning to retire, and the availability of potentially qualified workers is rapidly decreasing.

3. The U.S. nursing shortage has had a very definite impact on the availability of skilled professionals. As healthcare organizations contend with clinical staff shortages, nurses are expected to treat an increasing number of patients more efficiently, all while maintaining the highest safety standards. These increasing demands upon their time make it very difficult to participate in projects (such as software implementations) beyond their primary responsibility of patient care.

4. Rural hospitals are at a particular disadvantage because, in many cases, they are the only hospital within their county or even a 100-mile radius. When seeking very specific skills, such as MEDITECH, the rural hospital often has no choice but to recruit from outside the area and to relocate individuals. This increases the cost of recruitment and duration of vacancies. Rural hospitals report that filling vacancies can take up to 60% longer than in urban hospitals.

5. Working for only one company your whole life is no longer the norm. People now work for between five and 10 organizations during the course of their career, sometimes more.

Taking all of those factors into consideration—plus the economy—how do you think your workforce planning strategy has changed for the coming year?

Assessing your needs
In order to maximize your productivity and keep your project plans on track throughout the coming year, it’s critical that you accurately assess your needs. The best way to ensure that you can meet those needs is to be flexible in your workforce planning, which includes maintaining a team of salaried staff members, along with utilizing contractors to fulfill specific needs on a temporary basis. Utilizing contractors for specific projects or for a limited duration eliminates the constant expense of salaries and benefits when you don’t need the additional headcount all of the time. While permanent staff hires may play the primary role in your workforce planning for 2009, there’s a high probability that contract staffing will be an increasingly important factor.

In fact, between 70% and 80% of all companies in the U.S. utilize contract workers in one capacity or another. That percentage could gravitate more toward 80% in the months ahead, and of those 80%, more companies could utilize contract workers to a greater extent. The primary reason is that they’ll be in need of flexibility, and contract staffing can provide that flexibility. Below are some scenarios that help to illustrate that point.

• The organization is under a hiring freeze, but still needs workers to complete a project.

• The organization has a direct-hire candidate, but it wants to place them as a contractor before offering direct employment (a “try-before-you-buy” tactic).

• The organization has located a contractor for a project, but does not want to add them to its payroll.

• The organization wants to bring retired workers back on a contract basis to help with a project or deadline.

• The organization needs to convert a 1099 independent contractor to a W-2 employee because of concerns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

And how, exactly, does contracting provide flexibility? First of all, contractors can be brought on board more quickly, in order to meet project deadlines. Second, organizations can reduce layoffs by using contractors to meet increased workloads. Third, contractors can offer a fresh perspective on the various issues that organizations face. Fourth, companies have the option of hiring contractors on a direct-hire basis...or just letting them go at the end of their contract assignment. Flexibility is the key.

Contracting: quick, easy, and painless
Many experts say that we’re currently in the throes of a recession. How long the recession will last or how deep it will be is anybody’s guess at this point. Flexibility will be the key to your workforce planning needs, and contract staffing will enable you to accomplish more of what needs to get done for your organization.

What some organizations don’t realize is that contract staffing can be quick, easy, and painless with the help of a qualified recruiter and a contract staffing service provider. Systems Personnel, a professional search firm specializing in the healthcare IT market, has placed highly qualified MEDITECH professionals in contract assignments for its clients all across the country. Capitalizing on the concept of flexibility, they have fulfilled a variety of contract staffing needs for healthcare organizations: implementation specialists, project managers, interim support analysts, integration analysts, interim directors/CIOs, etc. Systems Personnel maintains versatility in recruitment by utilizing the services of a contract staffing service provider, Top Echelon Contracting, Inc., to administer contract assignments. Once Systems Personnel has identified a contractor to suit your specific need, Top Echelon Contracting will take care of all of the financial, legal, and administrative responsibilities associated with contracting that candidate to your organization.

For even more flexibility, you can use Top Echelon Contracting no matter how you identify your contractor of choice. Whether the candidate applied to your organization directly, was referred to you by one of your existing employees, or is someone you already know (perhaps even a former employee or retiree); your organization can still use Top Echelon Contracting as the contract staffing service provider. Simply call Donna Carroll at 413-569-1111 for a step-by-step explanation of services.

So, provide your organization some flexibility with one more tool this year—contract staffing—when attacking the challenges of workforce planning for 2009.

Debbie Fledderjohann is President of Top Echelon Contracting, Inc., a contract staffing service provider since 1992. For more information, visit them online at www.TopEchelonContracting.com.

Donna Carroll is VP of Business Development & Recruitment of Systems Personnel, a professional search firm specializing in the Healthcare Management, IT, and Sales & Marketing fields. Systems Personnel also publishes a periodic online newsletter, The MEDITECH Community Bulletin, for the MEDITECH software community. For more information, visit them online at www.CarrollSearch.com.

Guest Spot: Memorial Hospital and Manor Overcomes MEDITECH Challenges with a Little Help from Some Friends

By: Stan Otts, MIS Director, Memorial Hospital and Manor

We are an 80-bed hospital in the very rural corner of southwest Georgia. In the last half of the 1990’s the Hospital Board hired a new chief administrator who immediately recognized that our decade-old mainframes in Lab, Pharmacy, Medical Records and Billing were not going to survive the Year2K rollover. As those four departments were the only ones in "the digital age", he was also hamstrung by the absence of anything that could tell him where the money was going. He needed a whole-institution system, and (largely by lack of competition) MEDITECH became this facility’s "Hobson’s Choice" for an HCIS solution. We were number 80-something in all of America to sign up with MEDITECH for Client/Server.

As anyone who has dealt with Client/Server can plainly tell you (at least in those days a decade ago) what you get out of the box is largely a vacant system and you do everything for yourself. MEDITECH's solution for finding the things you need to know which were not already hard-coded into a menu (everything from the [then called] HCPCS annual reports; to the Purchasing Department looking up a vendor’s open P.O.’s by name) should be done by the end-user writing his/her own NPR reports.

Personnel with skill-sets that lend themselves to learning NPR in this neck-o-the-wood are few and far between. At that point in time, this entire corner of the state only had 33K dial-up access to the internet (while Atlanta had BroadBand) as only the larger nearby towns had 56K access. Hopefully that factoid illustrates that people with any programming sensibilities could move off 100 miles to real urban cities and double their pay. Whether you are optimistic enough to call this a real challenge, or ornery enough to wonder if MEDITECH’s parents were married at the time of its birth, it was a huge issue for years.

We sent 12 to 15 folks to Boston to take the "NPR Beginner’s Course" and they came back bamboozled by the fact that there were few resources for each module, and even fewer people at MEDITECH willing to lead a neophyte by the nose. Consequently, they soon became discouraged and quit. By this time, it is 2000 or 2001 and we had been Client/Server’d for three or four years through the course of which we tried several companies whose claims to fame were they were staffed by people who were MEDITECH exiles and escapees. The thing we (politically) needed the worst was what our Clinical Coordinator referred to as "the graphics report". This is a collection of Vital Signs plus Inputs and Outputs for patients over a multi-day time span with a graph across the first page charting the patient’s temperature for which our ballpoint-pen era physicians drooled over, griped, complained and cried about its absence for 3 years. Said company "worked" on a solution for 14 months but produced no useable results.

Enter a little help from some friends--CRH Consulting. In less than 2 days “Dennis” produced a completely working example that we still use to this day (albeit with frequent revisions when Ring Updates and errant DTS’s come down the pike).

Working with CRH is an absolute pleasure, so much so that we find ourselves using them more and more. Need an extract from B/AR that the UNIX system at the Credit Bureau can import? "Oh, Dennis!" Need to find some missing data for any one of the numerous mandatory reports demanded by the State or the Fed? "Oh, Dennis!" Very soon, report needs made the MIS Department sound like an episode of Jack Benny. "Oh, Dennis!...Oh, Dennis!"

Last autumn we threw a big one to CRH. We purchased a PACS system for radiology and needed an interface between MEDITECH and the PACS. We could have gotten a canned interface from MEDITECH (for a LOT of money) or from several vendors set up in the interface business (for slightly less money). But those would have been like the original Henry Ford about his cars: "You can have it in any color you want so long as it is black." CRH was far more tractable, and had the best price of everyone.

This turned out to be a huge ordeal for both of us, but I can hardly blame CRH. It seems this respected PACS company (on the VERY DAY we signed the contract) merged with a large multi-national corporation. As time wore by, it seems (at least from my perspective) that this new internal paradigm was ruffling the feathers of a few old-guard PACS employees. CRH had to weather through missing information, misinformation, and the absence of communication from the PACS company, but stuck with the 2-month implementation for nearly a year...and never raised their price. I know they lost their behinds in the cost over-run, but a lesser company with more common ethics (or the absence of any) would have cut-and-run leaving us in the lurch.

Not CRH. They are dedicated, loyal, detail oriented and have great follow-through. And if you know and respect VALCO, you should hear the accolades they ladle on CRH.

This is a fine collection of people, who always call back, answer email, answer voice-mail and have an excellent price-point for very high quality work.

We’ve also just had CRH here for a week-long training course to familiarize us, the few die-hards left who seem to grasp NPR, with a Beginner/Intermediate course which we all agreed taught us more about NPR than the three trips to Boston, or an in-house week-long training session a few years back with that other company.

So, here’s to getting a little help from your friends. Well done, CRH. Well done, indeed!

Stan Otts is MIS Director of Memorial Hospital and Manor, an 80-bed community hospital, 107-bed long-term care facility, and 22-bed assisted living facility. Memorial Hospital and Manor has served the healthcare needs of Decatur County and surrounding communities for almost 50 years. For more information, visit them online at www.mh-m.org.

Vendor Spotlight: Going Green Produces Immediate and Long-term Cost Reductions for Hospitals

The pressure continues to grow on hospitals to deliver an increasing number of services at high quality and minimized cost. Pressed between informed patients and government mandates, hospitals must reconcile patient satisfaction and care with cost and compliance. Staffing and operations are already pressed to limits, and the demands being placed on personnel are only increasing.

The situation is compounded by flat or decreasing reimbursements from healthcare payers. Increasing costs must be contained and efficiency has become a necessity to offset a multitude of situations. While many hospitals have pursued efficiency as it relates to patient care, the opportunity often remains to match efficient and effective care with efficient and effective business processes.

Care coordination and automation within hospitals and across healthcare organizations is imperative to streamline operations and reduce administrative costs. Cost savings totaling between $500 and $2000 per employee are possible by optimizing business processes.

Enabling hospitals with electronic workflow, unified electronic patient records (converging and consolidating data and records from multiple sources), automated billings, patient portals, and HR portals are just a few examples of common enhancements that can help streamline the business operations of your hospital with the added benefit of increased security and easily documented compliance with external or internal regulations.

Unfortunately, increased documentation for regulatory compliance often results in increased paper consumption and its long-term impact on the environment. Each industry uses paper in its own way, and healthcare organizations aware of the growing concerns for sustainability of the environment and the economy must evaluate their paper use and their participation in this trend.

Welcome to the ScerIS Environmental Initiative. Serious measures must be taken to produce serious results, and for that reason, ScerIS, Inc. is taking action for the sake of the environment. ScerIS, Inc. designs and implements business process optimization solutions, solutions designed to help hospitals reduce current costs and avoid future costs. Their products have a direct impact on paper consumption and they intend to increase that impact by presenting organizations with a simplified decision of whether or not to go “paperless.” When evaluating how and where to eliminate paper from your work environment, the cost must be weighed against the potential benefit and return. What ScerIS has done, is remove most of the cost, allowing you to focus on the benefit and return. ScerIS launched their Environmental Initiative program in October 2007 with the first goals set forth to reduce paper consumption by enough to prevent:

• 1,000,000 trees from being harvested

• 791 million gallons of waste water from being produced

• 116 thousand tons of CO2 from being emitted

To accomplish this, ScerIS has waived the licensing fees on its paper-saving Enterprise Report Management (ERM) system, which is used to replace printed reports with an online report management system that makes printing an option instead of a requirement.

“Upon reviewing the successes of customers using our ERM application over the last 12 years we recognized the significance of the role we can play in the green community,” says Jim Walckner, ScerIS President and CEO. “We are fortunate to be in a position where we have multiple business process optimization solutions and don’t only rely on revenues from our ERM application. We are hoping that, by surrendering our potential revenues for a good cause, we can encourage a green office evolution among organizations that might not have considered this technology due to licensing costs.”

Implementation of the ScerIS ERM application provides for the online storage and access of reports, zero balance purges, and all other output from hospital host applications and secures reports from unauthorized access, and helps hospitals officially retire legacy systems that have been replaced. It puts this information at the fingertips of users and reduces costs associated with printing and distribution, filing, storage, and much more. For example, if your MEDITECH system is taking 10–12 hours to close at month-end, it may have something to do with the number of zero balance accounts in your active Accounts Receivable. Using the ERM solution to move these accounts from MEDITECH to the ScerIS repository will reduce your month-end processing time to a couple of hours. These accounts will be at your fingertips for retrieval, and with forms overlay, the ability to reproduce a bill is just a click away.

ScerIS’ ERM solution is being provided to hospitals without an application software license charge and produces substantial immediate cost reductions of $100,000 to $500,000 per hospital in the direct reduction of paper and forms consumption. Additionally, this solution provides soft cost reductions of $400,000 to $2,000,000 per hospital as resources are freed up to perform higher value work. These systems produce enormous results. Given that ScerIS waves the licensing fee for this application, hospitals typically realize a 1–3 month return on their investment.

To find out more about this offer, or to schedule an online webinar please contact Bob Borr, VP Hospital Solutions at 978-218-5020 or at bborr@sceris.com. ScerIS, Inc., 490 Boston Post Road, Sudbury, MA 01776. TEL: 978-218-5000, FAX: 978-218-5099. WEBSITE: www.sceris.com.

Tricks of the Trade: Writing Readable MEDITECH NPR Macros (Part 3 of 3)

Contributed by: John Sharpe, President, Comstock Software, Inc.

This is Part 3 in a series on ‘Writing Readable Meditech NPR Macros’. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we examined ways to fit more code on the screen within the confines of the Meditech Macro Editor. When the code fits on the screen, programmers can read and understand the code quickly.

In examining the program below, we can learn a lot. The program does include great documentation on how to use the program. But the actual code will take a new member of the team a while to read and understand before they can maintain or improve it.

While the code doesn’t take up a lot of space and all fits on the screen; it isn’t something that can be quickly understood by another human either. Breaking the routine down into smaller blocks with descriptive subroutines can immediately clear up any ambiguity about the overall purpose of the code.

The program’s intent can be further clarified via the use of descriptive variables. Comments can be used sparingly to clarify the function of the code.

In review, this program included great documentation on how to use the program; but from a maintenance perspective, the program’s code was difficult to read and understand in a timely manner. Breaking the program down into well named sub-routines, using clearly named variables and adding a few well placed comments made this program more readable and understandable for the next programmer.

Now that the code is readable and understandable in a short period of time, the next programmer on the team will be able to step in quickly and make the required changes in a timely manner. And the original programmer will be able to move on to more challenging projects.

By writing readable code, you and your team will be more productive and your MEDITECH users will love you for your responsiveness to their needs.

John Sharpe is President / NPR Consultant at Comstock Software, Inc. Learn more about NPR Report Writing at the MEDITECH NPRReport Writing Blog.

Featured Employer: Sponsored by MeditechCareers.com

Every month, we feature one employer who has advertised their job posting on our affiliate web site: MeditechCareers.com. In addition to the basic job posting, we provide some information about the employer, their location and environment, and highlight them as a "Featured Employer" in this newsletter. MeditechCareers.com provides MEDITECH professionals a place to explore career opportunities. Having a separate web site for this purpose will allow us to maintain the original focus of The MEDITECH Community Bulletin for our loyal readers who are seeking news and information.

To advertise your MEDITECH-related opportunity on MeditechCareers.com and become a "Featured Employer", contact Donna Carroll at 413-569-1111.

Recent News: Perot Systems Announces Name Change of JJWild

PLANO, TX--November 7, 2008. Perot Systems Corporation (NYSE: PER) (www.perotsystems.com) today announced that JJWild, a company it acquired in August 2007, will fully transition its name to Perot Systems, completing an important milestone toward full integration. Perot Systems will now refer to the group as the MEDITECH Solutions Group which reflects its ability to access the global information technology provider’s deep healthcare solutions expertise to benefit hospitals utilizing MEDITECH products.

"Perot Systems has a longstanding reputation as the largest IT services provider in healthcare, while the JJWild brand is synonymous with high-quality MEDITECH optimization and support. We believe the new name leverages both companies’ strengths. The MEDITECH Solutions Group name is the culmination of our respective organizations coming together to create healthcare’s most capable and creative professional services team—one that remains dedicated to the MEDITECH marketplace," stated Chuck Lyles, President of Perot Systems' healthcare industry group.

The combined experience positions the MEDITECH Solutions Group to further leverage its application and technology expertise in support of its customers as they address the demands of today’s patient safety and quality of care initiatives. "We believe the breadth of offerings now available through the MEDITECH Solutions Group within Perot Systems is invaluable in helping our customers respond to healthcare’s increasingly complex requirements," stated Howard Messing, MEDITECH’s President and COO.

"Combining JJWild’s solid presence in the MEDITECH market with the strengths of our brand and overall healthcare capabilities enables us to better serve the MEDITECH community," said Berk Smith, Executive Vice President of Perot Systems’ healthcare group and global leader of the MEDITECH Solutions Group within Perot Systems. "The acquisition has allowed us to broaden our offerings to include new products and services like MSite MEDITECH Hosting Solution and expanding clinical transformation services. This, in addition to our long-standing offerings such as MEDITECH application optimization, technology integration, and our JSite disaster recovery service, has enabled us to build a broad portfolio of offerings that will be extremely valuable for our MEDITECH clients," stated Smith.

For more information on the MEDITECH Solutions Group within Perot Systems, please visit www.perotsystems.com/meditech.

About Perot Systems Corporation
Perot Systems is a worldwide provider of information technology services and business solutions. Through its flexible and collaborative approach, Perot Systems integrates expertise from across the company to deliver custom solutions that enable clients to accelerate growth, streamline operations and create new levels of customer value. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Perot Systems reported 2007 revenue of $2.6 billion. The company has more than 23,000 associates located in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. Additional information on Perot Systems is available at http://www.perotsystems.com.

More info: http://www.perotsystems.com/meditech/default/JJWildnamechangenewsreleasae.pdf

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Recent News: Ivinson Memorial Hospital Migrates to NeoTool’s Integration Engine Platform

PLANO, TX--November 12, 2008. Ivinson Memorial Hospital migrated to the NeoIntegrate™ integration engine to enhance their interfacing capabilities, reduce the cycle time to deploy interfaces, and decrease costs in adding interfaces.

Some of the key evaluation criteria in selecting NeoIntegrate included:

• Flexibility to meet the differing requirements for each interface

• Faster deployment times to implement interfaces

• Simple and effective method of monitoring interfaces

• Robust native high availability solution

• Ease of database connectivity and interaction

• VMware support

"We needed an integration engine that would function seamlessly in our MEDITECH environment, leveraging ADT feeds to many different systems including PACS, transcription, medication supply stations, external billing applications etc. NeoTool’s integration engine has functioned flawlessly, saving Ivinson Memorial substantially in interface costs," said Brandon Lewis, Systems Engineer, Medicine Bow Technologies. (Ivinson Memorial Hospital established Medicine Bow Technologies, an information technology services company, to provide technology and service solutions to their hospital and other healthcare providers throughout the Rocky Mountain region.)

Lewis added, "A critical requirement was a robust high availability solution which provided automatic failover. Unlike other systems that use a manual failover method, NeoTool’s high availability solution fails over automatically and is simple to deploy and maintain. NeoTool’s approach increases our confidence since their native high availability capabilities ensure all messages are persisted in the backup server, guaranteeing no messages are lost."

Other criteria that led Invinson Memorial to adopt NeoIntegrate as its integration platform was the menu-driven approach to developing interfaces and built in testing at every stage of interface development. Equally attractive is NeoIntegrate’s ease of connecting to any ODBC compliant database.

"With NeoIntegrate’s graphical user interface, building, testing, and deploying interfaces is simple. We can now deploy interfaces more quickly and with greater quality. After deployment, NeoIntegrate’s interface monitoring and alerting capabilities enable us to be very proactive in meeting the high demands of our environment," said Lewis.

"We were very impressed with NeoTool’s knowledge level throughout the implementation process. Working with our team, NeoTool completed the entire implementation sooner than estimated," said Lewis.

"Medicine Bow Technologies has proven to be innovative in their approach and aggressive in deploying solutions that ultimately enhances patient care," said Phil Guy, NeoTool CEO. "We are proud to work with this dedicated team in supporting their MEDITECH environment. Medicine Bow’s approach of consistently delivering exceptional customer service and solutions to their hospital client mirrors NeoTool’s approach with our customers. Working with them to solve real healthcare integration challenges in the most productive, efficient manner possible is gratifying to the NeoTool team."

About Ivinson Memorial Hospital
Located in Laramie, Wyoming, Ivinson Memorial Hospital has nearly 50 active physicians providing progressive patient care to the communities in Albany County, Wyoming and throughout the State. In order to fulfill the dynamic health care needs of our district, we offer comprehensive services, including: Acute Care services, Cardiopulmonary, Emergency Services (24-hour care, State Trauma Designation as an Area Trauma Hospital), Family Care Unit, Imaging (sophisticated technology including CT scanner, ultrasound, mammography, nuclear medicine, MRI, bone densitomer, stereotactic breast biopsy, and x-ray, Surgery (inpatient and outpatient), etc.

About Medicine Bow Technologies
Medicine Bow Technologies (www.medbowtech.com) is the information technology services company established by Ivinson Memorial Hospital to provide technology and service solutions to healthcare providers throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Located in Laramie, Wyoming, Medicine Bow Technologies provides a full spectrum of healthcare specific IT services in the areas of consulting, systems, applications and networking implementations, staffing, archiving/disaster recovery, and PACS and HIS systems.

About NeoTool
NeoTool’s healthcare integration solutions empower organizations to develop, test, deploy, and manage data exchanges between healthcare applications and providers. Through software, HL7 training, and consulting, NeoTool is dedicated solely to healthcare application interfacing. NeoTool customers include healthcare providers (e.g., hospitals, imaging centers, labs, and clinics), healthcare software application providers, and medical device manufacturers. www.neotool.com.

More info: http://www.neotool.com/about/pressreleases/Ivinson-Memorial-Selects-NeoIntegrate

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Recent News: Two MEDITECH Hospitals Listed in ‘InfoWorld 100’ Top IT Solutions for 2008

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--November 17, 2008. IDG’s InfoWorld today announced the winners of the InfoWorld 100 awards. The InfoWorld 100 awards honor companies for IT projects that exemplify intelligent, creative uses of technology to meet business and technical objectives.

Nominations were submitted by InfoWorld readers, technology partners, and end-user companies in late-summer. To be considered, projects must use multiple technologies in innovative ways to serve well-defined business goals. "Breathing new life into outdated operations, advancing business goals with inventive use of technology -- this year's winners demonstrate, once again, that innovative, business-minded IT is the lifeblood of successful organizations," said Jason Snyder, Senior Editor for InfoWorld.

Making this prestigious list were two MEDITECH hospitals: Parkview Adventist Medical Center, and Redlands Community Hospital. Congratulations to both facilities for their successes and recognition!

More info: http://www.infoworld.com/about/iw100_08_winners/InfoWorld_100_pr.doc

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Recent News: Patient EDU and CRH Consulting Launch Partnership to Enhance Patient Education in Hospitals Nationwide

EAST LONGMEADOW, MA--November 24, 2008. Patient EDU, the sister company of interactive multimedia firm Veritech Corporation, has announced a new partnership with CRH Consulting of Wilbraham, Mass., an IT Project Management, Business Analysis, Implementation and Integration Services consulting firm specializing in various healthcare systems including MEDITECH, Siemens, McKesson, QuadraMed, Cerner, and GE.

CRH will both service and install Patient EDU’s video-based, interactive patient education programs in a number of specified hospitals nationwide. Dave Merck, head of software development with Patient EDU, said this relationship expands the firm’s service capabilities by aligning the company with a leading healthcare information services company, in turn allowing Patient EDU to grow.

"We’ve found ourselves in a position where we’re growing very fast, and therefore, we want to capitalize on the resources in our area that can help us continue that growth and the development of new products," said Merck, noting further that the partnership with CRH will extend the benefits of the Patient EDU product line to a greater number of patients and healthcare professionals, thus increasing efficiency and reducing risk. CRH will also ensure that the program is communicating effectively with a hospital’s existing electronic medical records (EMR) software.

Patient EDU’s educational programs are interactive tutorials that include live action, 3D imagery, and question-and-answer sections. When a patient responds to a question, the answers are recorded in the patient’s electronic medical record.

Nurses ‘prescribe’ the educational materials to patients who have been admitted to the hospital for a variety of reasons, offering important information about their condition, surgery, and recovery. The presentations are customizable to each patient, in that different clips can be combined to create a program that appears seamless to the patient, but addresses specific concerns.

"For example, a patient who has been admitted with cardiac issues who also has a pre-existing condition such as diabetes can receive important information tailored for that set of concerns," said Merck.

The program also includes a back-end, administrative component that allows hospitals to track the education patients are given.

About Patient EDU
Patient EDU is a leading developer and marketer of patient education software programs for healthcare providers. Patient EDU's products aim to enhance patient/provider communication throughout the continuum of care. For more information on Patient EDU, visit www.patientedu.com.

About Veritech Corporation
Veritech Corporation is an award-winning video and interactive multimedia production company, specializing in the design and production of videos, CDs, DVDs, high bandwidth programs for the Internet/Intranet, and Web sites that help companies train, sell, and communicate information about their products and services, and inform and educate attendees in museums, tradeshows, and learning centers. For more information on Veritech, visit www.veritechmedia.com.

About CRHConsulting, Inc.
CRH Consulting, Inc. has experienced technical and development resources, as well as expertise in utilizing technology to support both daily business functions and new strategic initiatives, particularly for the health care industry. For more information on CRH, visit www.crhconsult.com.

More info: http://www.patientedu.com/pdfs/CRH.pdf

Worth a Read: Articles of Interest to the Healthcare IT Field

EHRs May Reduce Physicians Paid Malpractice Settlements
By: Molly Merrill
Healthcare IT News, November 26, 2008

A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows a trend toward lower paid malpractice claims for physicians who are active users of EHR technology.
Read article

HL7 Releases 'Breakthrough' Work
By: Bernie Monegain
Healthcare IT News, November 24, 2008

Standards organization Health Level Seven has published four new implementation guides for clinical document architecture, an accomplishment HL7 officials call "breakthrough progress."
Read article

Island in the Stream?
By: Mark Hagland
HealthCare Informatics, November, 2008

CIOs are approaching surgery as either a standalone operation or a link in the EMR-enabled continuum of care.
Read article

Weathering the Storm
By: Kate Huvane Gambell
HealthCare Informatics, November, 2008

Having a disaster recovery plan can mean the difference between scrambling for a quick IT fix and smooth sailing in the storm.
Read article

A Mandate in Mass
By: David Raths
HealthCare Informatics, November, 2008

A new state law in Massachusetts mandates that hospitals and community health centers adopt CPOE systems by 2012 and electronic health record systems by 2015. Is the new law's deadline of 2012 too ambitious?
Read article