HealthData Management - November 2012

of its system. Evans’ financing concession obviously was a major factor in Pemiscot selecting Prognosis, but it resulted from a personal relationship that developed between the two CEOs.

Noble was able to negotiate directly with the Evans, while other vendors offered sales representatives who didn’t have technical expertise and authorization to make decisions. The other vendors gave standard, one-way contracts with little or no recourse to Pemiscot if they did not succeed. The bottom line, Noble says, is that he clicked with Evans on trust issues. The hospital also is now implementing Prognosis’ financial information system and a laboratory system from its partner Orchard Software.

But not everything went smoothly strat-
egy worked during implementation and
go-live, and Noble says the organization
learned a few things. When the EHR sys-
tem was loaded, the internal network
didn’t handle response times well, and
Noble initially believed the issue lay with
the vendor. The culprit however, turned
out to be improper configuration of the
internal network. “Whatever you’re going
to connect to the EHR has to be operating
at a high level of proficiency, otherwise
your EHR won’t operate proficiently.” One
of the systems that was tough to interface
to the EHR was the pharmacy system, be-
cause Pemiscot didn’t do enough testing
of the interface before going live, he says.
The problem was compounded by the
pharmacy vendor thinking it could link
the existing version of Pemiscot’s system
to the new records system. In the end, the
only option was for Pemiscot to upgrade
to the current pharmacy version.

Respect matters

There’s no doubting the role price plays in vendor selection. But some vendors take themselves out of the running early just by how they treat the prospective client.

Spurred by the EHR meaningful use program, Sabine Medical Center went live with its first emergency department information system in November 2011 in preparation for a new core hospital information system from Healthcare Management Systems, which went live in January 2012.