Love Thy Vendor?

IBM delivers new mobility services for the healthcare industry

IBM has announced new services to help healthcare organizations implement wireless mobility solutions. IBM Enterprise...

Group donates $1 million in software to Boynton clinic

The Quantum Group Inc. in Wellington, FL, is donating $1.2 million in software and other equipment over the next five...

New e-resources support growing patient empowerment

The face of healthcare is changing, with the growth of online medical information and other similar technologies...

go to complete list

Twelve years ago, Kingsport, TN-based Holston served as a beta site for its EMR software, owned by Chicago-based Allscripts since 2001. Even though the software has matured beyond beta, one thing has remained constant in Holston's relationship with its vendor supplier: communication. Every two weeks, Holston participates in a vendor call, hashing out problems or suggesting changes. In addition, Allscripts sends representatives in person every quarter.

The constant communication is a prerequisite to having a good vendor relationship, regardless of how well the software seems to work, says Chip Childress, director of IT. "Sometimes people blow up and point fingers at their vendor, but they have not communicated what they needed," he says. Holston does not take its biweekly calls and vendor site visits for granted. "We have signed a separate contract covering our support issues," Childress says. "It is three pages long."

As Holston's network has become more complex--it now reaches 27 remote clinics--the vendor meetings have grown in importance. Downtime became an issue, as a data circuit failure might keep a remote clinic from seeing patients. Working with Allscripts, the group devised a networking strategy in which each clinic maintains a standalone PC. Each night, information on the next day's patients is fed to these PCs, enabling the clinic to function in case the network goes down. "The resolution came directly out of our ongoing meetings with Allscripts," says Childress.

On occasion, however, talking is not enough. "We've had wonderful relationships with our vendors," Miller says. "But there are times I have to get on the phone and tell them, 'It's time you came here and addressed this problem.' There is a heck of a lot of difference sitting in a clinic with us and sitting in Chicago in a computer test lab with a bunch of icons."

Gary Baldwin is technology editor of HealthLeaders magazine. He can be reached at gbaldwin@healthleadersmedia.com.

How to Analyze Vendor Culture

In September 2006, Cleveland-based University Hospitals signed a 10-year contract for an integrated ambulatory and hospital clinical information system. Reportedly worth "tens of millions" of dollars, the contract represented the culmination of a two-year vendor search involving dozens of UH staff. Leading the multidisciplinary selection team was Lynne King, EHR project director. "We wanted a vendor willing to put skin in the game with us," she says. "We didn't want to just purchase software and be left alone to implement it. We wanted a significant investment from the vendor to make it work."

A series of site visits and detailed RFP analysis helped winnow the field to three: Cerner, Epic and Eclipsys. But before University Hospitals made its pick, it took an unusual step. King assembled a group of high-ranking hospital executives for a series of final meetings with the candidates. Salespeople were minimally involved, however; King and her group wanted direct discussions with the software chief executive officers. "We had already heard the sales perspective," she explains. "We wanted to understand these companies from the top. We wanted to make sure our cultures were compatible."

Joined by University Hospitals' own CEO, its chief information officer, chief medical officer, chief operating officer, and other project team directors, King peppered the vendor executives with a series of questions. UH was looking to integrate its IT across six hospitals and 150 clinics--could the company support a large implementation? The system also wanted to set the stage for future data sharing with other applications--was the company open to interoperability? Finally, was the company willing to uphold UH's "shared risk" model? The hospital wanted to pay based on milestones achieved, not arbitrary timelines.