Black Friday

Wow, 2 HIT executives bite the dust on one day last week:

1. John Glaser is leaving Partners after a long and very successful career at one of the largest and most IT-advanced facilities in the country. John is easily the most famous and respected CIO in the industry, and played a major role as an advisor to ONCHIT for the past 6-months, helping his fellow-Partners alumnus, Dr. Blumenthal, craft the ARRA stimulus funding details like certification and meaningful use. His numerous articles in Healthcare Informatics have always been interesting and educational, so we wish him the best at his new job: CEO at Siemens! Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire, Glaser is entering the vendor world for the first time, which should be challenging. Hiring John is a coup for Siemens, who acquires the most famous name and face in the business, and one of the true visionaries of our industry. Will be fascinating to see how he changes the Siemens IT world vision, or vice-versa? Bottom-line focus, 90-day earnings per share mania, and unforgiving annual sales quotas will all be new adventures for John, but probably minor compared to the Herculean task of building his own EMR at Partners! Wonder if Janet Dillione, who might be bored at such a small vendor as Nuance, is checking out the Boston real estate market? 2. Jim Burgess - is leaving Healthland where he has been CEO since 2007. Jim led the sea changes at Healthland, formerly Dairyland, which was acquired by the VC-firm Francisco Partners a few years back. He led the difficult (but overdue) name change, and engineered two key acquisitions: APS, a shared system based in Texas with over a hundred small hospital clients, and AHN (American Health Network) out of Omaha, whose Clarus product is Healthland's go-forward EMR product. The small hospital market is a tough one: competitors like CPSI and HMS book less revenue in an entire year than Epic makes on one of Judy's mega-deals, so keeping investors and clients happy while making a tough quota is challenging to say the least... No name on a replacement yet, but please don't call me: I'm too old and close to Social Security to want a hard job like Jim had! We wish him the best, and hope Healthland comes up with a good leader in these challenging times...