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

maybe they can merge

[yagu]

Maybe they can merge the two projects (the Britain and the KP project) for greater efficiencies.

Re:maybe they can merge

[__aaclcg7560]

While we're at it, let's combined the FBI, CIA, NSA and Defense Department IT departments into one nationwide organization and put FEMA in charge to manage that disaster.

Re:maybe they can merge

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold on a second!
He didn't mention the synergies that merging the two products would bring to the core competenancies of both organizations.

Now that I have, can I get the job?

well this obviously can't be right

[bunions]

The free market is more efficient than some socialist government project. There must be some error in the article.

Re:well this obviously can't be right

[bunions]

In a truly free market, incompetent doctors would put themselves out of business because all their patients would be dead - problem solved!

Re:Go USA!

[bberens]

US health service is second only to our education!