Meditech Nixes HIMSS

Howard Messing announced Meditech is pulling out of HIMSS on Friday. Admirable, as HIMSS blows hundreds of millions of dollars each year on sales & marketing from HIS vendors who could put the money to far better use, like hiring some experienced implementers (not recent MBA wiz-kids) and programmer/analysts (RNs & MDs from this country!). Actually, the motivation was as much greed as prudence: Meditech's net profit was down 60% this year from last; gone are the days of their 40% profit plus!Â

Hats off to CEO Neil Pappalardo and CFO Barbara Manzolillo, who cut their own salaries to half of 2007 levels to share the pain. Wish some of our banking executives had half the morals and brains of Neil and Barbara! Meditech joins Cerner in bowing out of HIMSS. Maybe the days of the$2M+ booths (like McKesson's last year) are gone? Now, if only the vendors would put the money to good use and do some real R & D and less wasteful marketing...