Today, the Charleston Gazette is printing, on their front page, a story based on an interview I did with Tara Tuckwiller, along with a reprint of Rhonda Rundle’s Wall Street Journal article. From the Gazette article:
In a telephone interview with the Gazette Wednesday from his home in Los Angeles, Deal said he still thinks Kaiser Permanente is a good organization.
“For me, there were these problems that were threatening patient safety and the financial stability of the organization,” he said.
“It was not within me to just ignore that or be quiet about it.”
Ignore the Problems
The Kaiser Permanente Responds page has no actual response to the Wall Street Journal article, and, unfortunately, our Board of Directors has not yet addressed the Minnesota Attorney General report, the Dodd SEC filings, or the other inaccuracies in George Halvorson’s initial response. In fact, our Board has never commented whatsoever on any of these serious issues.
As if the continued complete lack of responsibility by our Board wasn’t enough, the organization now has officially adopted Mr. Halvorson’s “just give me more time to hide the problems” mantra:
“The value and merit of the various KP systems and strategies will be validated by time and actual performance.”
Halvorson’s original plea:
“[We] will prove the point beyond debate of whether or not [HealthConnect] can handle our total volume. I am confident that those results will be entirely satisfactory. All signs are that the careful work we did to guarantee scalability of the system have succeeded.”
That’s not what the 722-page document obtained the Los Angeles Time said.
Finally, the “official response” continues the attempt to say that the few features of KP Online are an integral part of HealthConnect and indicative of the total project’s “success.” KP Online is not KP HealthConnect. Requesting an appointment online is convenient. Your physician having access to accurate, reliable medical records can be critical. The system’s reliability has not drastically improved since November, and instead of talking honestly about that fact, Mr. Halvorson ordered that the downtime figures stop being published internally.
The project and the system can be pushed along, but that doesn’t mean it’s truly functioning, and that certainly doesn’t mean it’s ever going to be a success. Instead, we’re throwing more money at what will ultimately be another multi-billion dollar write-off — to shield, as long as possible, the comfortable position of George Halvorson and the reputation of our absent Board members.
Many Discussions
Meanwhile, around the web, folks are talking. I’ll try to list here some of the comments forwarded on to me.
From Rick Nelson, at Taking the Measure:
“Interestingly, Deal’s mass mailing wasn’t a rash, spur of the moment action. His message is a carefully edited 2000-word indictment alleging conflict of interest among Kaiser Permanente officials and outside organizations as well as mismanagement of the document-conversion program.”
You can see my original message here.
From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
“Mr. Deal’s email has the ring of truth. Mr. Halvorson’s email has the ring of arrogant corporate vengeance.”
You can read Mr. Halvorson’s response here.
From a lively discussion at MetaFilter:
“I want to say that I was struck at the quality of this man’s email; it does a better job of representing the issue than I’ve come to expect from investigative journalists these days. He may not have a future in IT any more (debatable), but he would make a fine reporter.”
Professor Bailey and Professor Hollis would be proud.
“By definition, a nonprofit has been deemed to be an organization serving a public good. In exchange for this public service, their obligation to pay income tax gets waived. Every nonprofit organization is a taxpayer-subsidized organization. As a nonprofit they also become eligible for public subsidies in the form of grants. A nonprofit’s profligate waste better be a matter of public interest. We’re all its stock holders. [...] If you think a massive nonprofit’s screwups or corruption are none of your business, go right on ignoring it. It’s your investment to flush away if you want. The rest of us stakeholders will be over there, giving a damn.”
on Apr 27th, 2007 at 15:54
I used to work at KP, in Silver Spring, MD (KP’s red-headed stepchild). For what it’s worth, although I did not work on HealthConnect, I heard enough talk internally — and saw enough things wrong in other areas — that I have no trouble at all believing your assertions.
HealthConnect (a.k.a. Epic, and probably several other names) will ultimately be discarded as hopelessly broken, although it’ll take some time and millions more dollars before that happens.
on Apr 28th, 2007 at 10:55
Go Justen!