Today Kaiser CEO George Halvorson sent his own ~~freaking long~~ blast email to respond to Justen's concerns. After dismissing Justen as a young pup who hasn't been at Kaiser very long (note Halvorson was hired in 2002), Halvorson then minces and picks and wiggles his way through a response that boils down to "you're just going to have to believe we did due diligence and here's the talking points for HealthConnect."

For those who like to torture themselves by reading the lame excuses of CEOs, here's the blather.

My favorite part was where Halvorson confirmed that Kaiser mainly wanted a billing system with more teeth:

We very much need the EPIC functionality. The billing system alone is crucial to our operational survival, as people actually involved in our billing process know. Our old home-grown CIS system simply did not have that needed functionality.

Woo hoo - I've been totally vindicated!!!

At least Halvorson didn't stick the trademark symbol beside HealthConnect like the PR weenie who sent out the response to Justen (link in my previous post).

Also, I found a couple articles about the HealthPartners investigation, with reference to Halvorson: the perks, more perks, the slap on the wrist, and the payoff. A week in Sao Paolo for a "trade mission"??? Oh, and Halvorson fired 220 people on his way out.

Update: Justen has been placed on "administrative leave"! Kaiser hasn't learned anything!!! Article here.

"What I'm doing is working to ensure the waste and abuse stops," said Deal, who lives in Los Angeles. "That's not something you get fired for."

Hmmm - obviously Justen hasn't yet realized that Kaiser doesn't need a reason - they'll just make something up to put on the documentation, count on HR to destroy the evidence in the event of a dispute, and deploy their Issues Management hacks to smear his name in public until he will never be able to work anywhere else again. And if that doesn't work, they might try framing him: hey, wasn't Justen standing awfully close to that $7 billion dollar deficit? Kaiser could just trick a state agency into decrying Justen and rely on NBC to re-arrange interview clips to make Justen look like he took that $7 billion himself. After all, KAISER GOT AWAY WITH IT BEFORE.

And another thing: The October 6 incident described a couple posts down wasn't caused by any power outage. It was caused by human error: a test server was pointed to production. DO SOME RESEARCH VICTORIA COLLIVER.

Amusing side note: Epic consultants apparently don't think to highly of their Kaiser partners. Update: Apparently the guy has modified his blog - I'm working on getting a copy of the original up now. Here it is: In the original post the Epic guy just says he did a job at Baldwin Park Medical Center and the "support staff" had a "remarkably poorer work ethic than Epic employees." He also added the bit about it all being the best for patient care.

Also, Epic seems to be garnering a reputation as an interminable money-suck. Were these implementations included in Kaiser's "inclusive review"? Update: Someone just reminded me that former Kaiser CA President Dick "under investigation" Pettingill imposed Epic on his new CEO gig at Allina. I keep seeing rumors that the Allina EMR is over-budget and under-working, but no mainstream media coverage. If anyone actually knows anything about this, please let me know.

Kaiser chatter: The HISTalk blog is getting some response from Kaiser employees. Check it out here and here. Update: The HisTalk blog has an excellent set of highlights on the home page of his blog. There's a note that Kaiser attempted to disappear Justen's email - but once more their slime tactics were foiled by the wonderful capacity of the grassroots to get the truth out. Also, there's more backup for Justen's claim that Epic doesn't scale. I've seen several weighty remarks on this, and I have a feeling Justen heard it quite a few times from the IT boots on the ground before he put it in his email.

There's also some chatter at Kaiser Thrive. She has also posted a link to the full text of Justen's email. I've never posted that here because I knew that Justen had just bought a world of hurt, and I didn't want to do anything to add to it. However, now several other blogs have posted it, so I guess that cat's out of the bag.

The new king chooses his new court: Temp-CIO Turkstra's New Senior Leadership Team