Kenneth Kizer, chairman and chief executive at Medsphere, resigned last week.
In the manual of public relations tricks, I guess issuing a troubling press release on a Friday must have been deprecated in favor of not issuing one at all.
Tim posted word of the resignation at 6:25 Friday morning, while Modern Healthcare got around to it at around 10:36. Otherwise, nary a word has been spoken. And that, unfortunately, says a lot about Medsphere’s weakening relevance.
I wrote last December about a CBS Evening News story which featured Ken Kizer, and which talked about his successful promotion of Vista at the Veterans Health Administration. Despite quoting Kizer as saying that Vista’s success is “transferable to the private sector,” there’s nary a mention of Medsphere or OpenVista in the piece.
Since Medsphere has been (or at least, was once) the very (corporate) embodiment of that “transference” of technology, that’s a pretty disappointing omission.
Medsphere and OpenVista should be relevant. Unfortunately, most of Medsphere’s schizophrenic board and its (now departed) executives completely lost sight of what Medsphere is supposed to be doing: selling OpenVista.
Selling OpenVista, you say? Must be on the bottom of their priority list, I suppose.
Instead of focusing on their technology, their product, their (long lost?) mission, the company’s (now vanishing?) executives decided to attempt to crucify (via the courts) the company’s two founders, brothers Dr. Scott Shreeve and Steve Shreeve, for their efforts to promote open source healthcare, which (once upon a time, at least) was a key part of Medsphere’s mission. Why would Medsphere go off the deep end? Well, it’s too ridiculous a story to try to explain, except to say that the entire debacle has nearly eliminated any respect the open source or healthcare communities ever had for Medsphere. (Though, along those lines, perhaps Medsphere could look into recruiting Darl McBride as their next chief executive? I kid. I hope.)
When you have such a head start, two respected and committed co-founders, some impressive and proven technology, and great momentum, why would you seemingly throw nearly all of that away?
Perhaps Tim put it best:
Does Medsphere have any feet left to shoot after firing (and suing) its co-founders and now losing its only obvious asset, Ken Kizer? They were fun as a scrappy, passionate underdog with big names, but I have to admit that, without Kizer, I really have no interest in them. Plus, the lawsuit makes me wonder if open source interests might be better served by other VistA stewards. Just my opinion, of course.
Can Medsphere get their act together? Could they mend fences with their co-founders? Could they repair their reputation in healthcare? And in the open source community? Could they refocus on getting OpenVista back on track? They could, I think, and should.
Sadly, I won’t hold my breath.
on Jun 1st, 2007 at 03:50
Justen.
I find your posts so educational that I know a little more. Your post about Medsphere and Vista led me to the study in Cancer showing chemotherapy drug errors to be due to many reasons, including “faulty equipment” at UCSF, and not order entry error which will not be solved by CPOE devices. The problems with health IT is that it causes new errors which may be more dangerous than the ones it is attempting to correct, as shown in several scientific papers published in JAMA and Pediatrics.
Is Vista that good that it adjusts to doctor’s work flow or is it like the other health IT devices which require workflow to adjust to the demands of the IT device designers, who do not understand what it takes to care of a complex illnes?
Speaking of Vista and the VA, Kolodner, who comes from the VA, just took over as national health IT guru from Brailler who abruptly resigned on April 23. Justen, do you know why Brailler resigned? Did someone call him on financial conflicts of interest or was it just his need to spend time with his family?
Best regards,
Menoalittle