Forget The Enterprise, Miss The Boat

I hate desktop software. Every new application is a potential conflict with mission critical software. Then you have the effort of installing and updating. It is a terrible model for the enterprise. Wherever possible I am looking for Software as a Service (SaaS) option. Adobe has a potentially great service in their CreatePDF SaaS offering (once they add [...]

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A CIO’s Guide to Recruiting

The need for qualified IT talent in healthcare is driving many new openings in health systems.  What are some of the methods you can use to recruit health IT workers to your health system?  CIOs and HR officers need to be careful in their process of hiring health IT talent. What can you do to [...]

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CIOs Lost and Found

Most of us have faced a job search at some point in our work life.  How you handle finding new CIO opportunities or having new CIO opportunities find you is definitely an art.  The marketplace is full of job seekers and the positions are limited.  Sometimes being rejected is part of the game.  How you [...]

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Microsoft’s Amalga Has Potential, But Work Remains

With the recent selection of CSC, Microsoft, and HealthUnity by the MetroChicago Health Information Exchange, I’m once again intrigued with the role that Microsoft might play in the HIT market. I suspect the MetroChicago project is more interested in HealthVault, but Amalga is the most interesting product in Microsoft’s struggling healthcare vertical. Amalga is a [...]

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The Petitio Principii of ACOs

The serious lack of infrastructure to support an expansive and meaningful ACO strategy is missing from the healthcare technology toolkit. Some may view this as a non critical issue but with so many organizations engaged in some form of ACO activity, we have to ask, “Have we begged the question?” It seems to me we [...]

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Getting Back in Balance

According to a recent snap survey on healthsystemCIO.com, 53% of the CIO respondents were stressed about their work/life balance.  The intense pressures of the last two years seem to have made CIO work days longer, and weekends shorter.  What I have found is that some CIOs are thriving on these challenges of Meaningful Use, ICD-10 [...]

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Breaking Down the Post Go-Live Live Huddle

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Affinity Medical Group’s EHR pilot went live on GE Centricity EMR whis week. It has been a well run project throughout and I had the honor of joining our bright, hard-working team for their end-of-day huddle. They did a few things that I really liked. This is not an exhaustive list. I would love to [...]

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The Government’s Slippery Usability Slope

With the recent ONC hearings on IT usability, there comes an inevitable discussion around how government can help increase the usability of systems in the healthcare world. I know, you are already chuckling. However, this is no laughing matter. Metrics are already in place for the functionality needed to get certified, which criteria have eaten [...]

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