Big HMO Jolted By Email, System Failures

Posted by Zonk on Friday April 27, 2007 @01:52AM from the so-proud-to-have-epic-systems-in-madison dept.

JoanofAlaska writes "The Wall Street Journal is running a front page story about the internal mass e-mail that exposed the failing $4 billion dollar electronic medical record system at Kaiser Permanente, the biggest non-profit HMO in the country. When word of the system's meltdown quickly spread back in November, one reporter obtained a 722 page internal document that showed patient safety lapses as a result of the system's problems. Then in February, the Los Angeles Times had a front page story in which a systems analyst who worked on the project called it 'the worst [technology] project I have seen in my 25 years in the business.' They've created a website to try to rebuild confidence in the project, and they say their goal for system availability is 99.7% (they're currently at 99.2%)."

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Smoke, meet fire... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-04-27 01:53 · Score: 5, Informative

Here's the first e-mail. Their CEO sent out an e-mail response to all their employees the next day (the same day it looks like the CIO suddenly resigned effective immediately).

I don't know what to say about the first e-mail until I see more but the CEO sounds like a real jack ass in the second one. And if that 99.2% number is right then they got bigger problems than some email - that's all I can say!

ac