Healthcare Giant Faces IT Nightmare

Joan writes "Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO in the U.S., has spent about $4 billion on an unreliable electronic medical record system that is impacting patient care, according to a 722-page internal report revealed by Computerworld. The CIO resigned after the news came out, and CEO George Halvorson is telling the media that the goal is an alarmingly low 99.5% uptime and that all the problems are really just power outages. Yesterday, Slashdot covered a story about the possibility that the NHS in the UK could now claim the 'biggest IT disaster' prize, but Americans, fear not: so far, the Brits are running a much more efficient failure at $24,000 per physician per year, while America's KP is spending $76,920 per physician, per year on its failing project."

Comments

Because they use Windoze.

[twitter]

Really the issues here are all M$. The only reason people need Citrix is because of fundamental problems Microsoft has with networking. I've seen smaller shops use Citrix well. Going nation wide with it is just stupid. The bottom line of this problem is that they are sticking with Legacy software at the doctor's office. It just won't work.

Re:25 Year old "project manager"

[VP]

Look at the comments here for more information about the 25 year old Publication Project Supervisor in the Health Education and Training Department, and some of the nonsense he is spouting as facts.

See also here (the Kaiser summary) for a more balanced view of the issue.