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discussion forums - Global Care Solutions - What went wrong with Global Care Solutions?

  • What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted on December 30, 2006 03:31 AM

    What went wrong and what could or should have been done differently? Why has "Hospital 2000" only been deployed in a handful of hospitals instead of a handful per year? Why do so many end users hate Hospital 2000, and why have so many potential customers turned away after putting a considerable effort into evaluating the system? Will the investors ever get any value for their and Bumrungrad's money that was spent on salaries and equipment for GCS?

    As we all know, what started out as a great vision for a system that were going to be sold to many more hospitals didn't turn out quite like intended. We also know that the GCS management don't exactly encourage those who have opinions on possible improvements in the way the company is run, development methodology, architectural implementations, the way the product is marketed, or just about anything else.

    Here's your chance, all back-seat drivers, current and ex-employees of GCS. Many of you have previous experience from real software companies that develop, market, and then actually sell their software. The GCS managers on the other hand are all from consulting and in-house development backgrounds where their "eat-what-you-are-being-served-or-starve" attitude is easier to force onto users. Bring out your knowledge and experiences from those real software companies and compare that to the GCS approach. What is the difference between those who sell three systems in a lifetime and those who sell hundreds or thousands of systems per year? Are the customers and end users really idiots? Should the company listen to their feedback and wishes? Will the .net version ever be deployed at Bumrungrad?

    Maybe your comments can have a positive influence if the GCS management one day come down from their pedestals and actually take in opinions from others instead of shrugging it off as "coming from idiots".

    Oh, and dear GCS management, you can also have your say here. Feel free to write that nothing went wrong, nothing is wrong, everything is on track, all ex-employees and half of the current ones are idiots, any failures are at the fault of employees and not management related, and feel free to do it all in CAPS. Just refrain from threats of "tuk-tuk accidents" and other things that may violate the Coderific Terms of Service, please.

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  • Re: What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted by bullfeathers on January 04, 2007 05:16 AM

    This is a pretty odd posting I am replying to (the one I am replying to called "What went wrong"). Is this really a discussion forum topic? (rhetorical). I am replying to their comment that someone could think of shipping "hundreds or thousands" of HIS systems a year is simply stupid. Sorry for being so blunt.

    I do not work and have not worked at Gloval Care, but I have worked at 3 notable HIS companies as a developer over the past 20 years. Almost all my computer experience has been in healthcare. Cerner, HBOC and Lawson (I just posted on Lawson). I currently develop customizations for one of these vendors - and let me tell you, it is not a picnic. I started with MUMPS and moved to relational databases in mid-90s'. I think my experiences do make me qualified to comment on a lot of things - in particular the ability to install, train and deliver a massive system in a hospital. All HIS systems on the planet are long duration sales cycles and long duration implementation cycle systems. If you do not have the patience to see through what you started, then healthcare is not the industry to be in.

    If they postee is/were an employee of an HIS company then it is pretty odd to think you will mass-market an HIS, put in a box and sell it like MS Office. The postee is not knowledgeable about the industry. Period.

    I went to this company's website and they are located in Asia. I am no expert on Asia, but the market in Asia is so small that I am surprised they have this many installs! I went and visited 20 or so hospitals in Asia a year ago, and they were supposed to be top-notch. I was there specifically to study the market and see if our system would work there. By the looks of these hospitals, they do not buy systems, period. They would not have the budget for the hardware, let alone the software. I am sure these hospitals have really good doctors - many of them are US trained. But, I think they need to work on buying paint before they really move to complete computerization of everything. The market does have a feeling that it will be the place to be in the near future, so plant your seeds early and reap the rewards, good move. You need a lot of patience for this type of market.

    I mentioned I went to Asia to see if our system would "fit" in Asia. We bailed on that idea. We have been successful in the US, and we thought going from State to State was hard. Going from country to country was, to put it mildly, humbling. Languages were complicated. Billing was the killer. Basically, any big $$ system in the US will never be successful outside the US - they are hard coded for the US market.

    If this person making the posting is a marketing person, and they think they can sell "sell hundreds or thousands" of any module (a year!!!) , they literally have no concept of reality. Cerner with 25 years in the business, the great Cerner, has less than 150 full HIS (I mean really full - all of their modules) over the last 20+ years, and maybe another 700 angry customers that have taken portions of their system. At Cerner, it would take us 3 or more years to install a system for a non-University hospital of 600 beds, for a University Hospital double that figure.

    The reality that there are about 6,000 hospitals all over the USA. Period. 5000 of these are community hospitals in small towns all across the country. The postee seems to think one could sell the majority of these hospitals a system in one year!! If a big vendor sold 20 full HIS systems a year, they would consider themselves pretty exceptional.

    Sorry, I rambled on a bit..... What got me going is this postee's words that they think this HIS company, or any HIS company, is going to box up an HIS and sell thousands of copies a year, just fires me up. 20 years of grinding away at this business, and then someone thinks healthcare is easy. Marketing people really work me up. If this is a developer (and I thought this site was for developers only), then they have no idea what it takes to build and install a large HIS.

    One off-the-wall comment I will make regarding this postee - there seems to be an anger issue here. Does the postee really think it is normal and healthy to have some sort of forum to discuss issues with their employer on the internet (again, rhetorical question here)? I guess so, or they wouldn't have written it. If they are still employed at this company, leave and seek medical attention. If they are a former employee of this company, get a life and get over it. This looks like it takes too much of your time to be a healthy activity. I know I am out of line saying these things, but take a look at what you wrote - it is certainly weird. Sorry for being so honest.

    Please do not reply, as I will not be reading this forum. I can see the seething anger in the postee's writing, so they are dying to hit reply and write something about me. Please, leave it for the gym.

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  • Re: What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted on January 04, 2007 05:47 AM

    Dear Mr. Bullfeathers,

    Those are some very good points.

    Let's start with "that someone could think of shipping 'hundreds or thousands' of HIS systems a year is simply stupid". This is an excellent observation. The company management has all along strived for this goal and not being a HIS person I may incorrectly have believed this to be possible. Maybe you are correct that it is not possible, but in order to do this GCS sells their product "as-is" with very few, if any, customizations. The buyer has to adapt the way they run their hospital to match the way Bumrungrad Hospital is run, instead of adapting the software to the hospital. Now, Bumrungrad is not an inefficient organization, rather they are very quick at getting patients in-and-out of the door with a bag of medicine and a bill in their hands so other hospitals who want a quick and streamlined patient flow without worrying too much about patient safety may have many things to learn from them. As a comparison you can not customize screen layout, content or flows the way you can do in traditional HISes. There is no elaborate security setup as there is in the big HISes. Several potential customers have turned around at the doorstep after realizing this.

    You are also correct that I, like most people at GCS, do not know the "HIS industry". My background is in software for other industries, and comparing GCS with any successful software company that not only develops but also sells software shows that it can not be easy to go from being a consultant at Perot Systems to being the CEO of a software company. A few people with previous HIS experience have passed through the company, but none of them stayed for a longer period of time.

    So yes, maybe you hit the nail right on the head. What went wrong may be the misconception that a piece of software developed for one hospital by a handful of developers can be burnt onto CDs, and then mailed to Perot Systems or Accenture for implementation across the world. Of course, even getting to the "burning a CD" step failed because the software is not written to be packaged, although being able to change a few tables of reference data should be all customization anyone needs according to the company management. Can you believe that one of the selling points for this system is you can change the list of patient genders throughout the system in case you want some other options than Male/Female/Unknown, and that you can record "species" for patients in case there is ever an alien invasion, but at the same time you can not block a specific part of the EMR for a user or group of users, say psychiatric patient records from being viewed by dermatology nurses or dentists?

    I am not sure I really understand your comment "Does the poster really think it is normal and healthy to have some sort of forum to discuss issues with their employer on the internet". I think you are on the wrong website. The whole idea with coderific.com and these new per-company forums is that employees can share experiences and opinions about their employers so that other current employees, future employees, former employees, or even the employers themselves can read and respond to them. Welcome to the Intarweb. See http://coderific.com/about/background if you have any more questions about what Coderific is all about.

    "If they are still employed at this company, leave and seek medical attention." I am not in need of any medical attention, but leaving may be a good piece of advice. Somewhere close to 200 people have done so between the days they started the project-turned-company and today if figures quoted by management are anything to go by. The company's management is even proud over this achievement and in some twisted way occasionally refers to it as evidence of their own greatness.

    Either way, the whole thing is a big black hole for the investors and to get any return for their investments they would really have to sell a lot of systems, or sell the company to another gullible investor. Both are very unlikely to take place.

    Check out some of the reviews for the company and you will see that my views are shared by other current and former GCS employees, and realize that this is Asia and you can not openly have opinions about your employer unless you want a pair of concrete boots.

    Thank you for your insightful and valuable observations from a HIS point-of-view. This is exactly what this forum is for. Keep 'em coming.

    Now, let me ask you this: have you ever heard the CEOs of Cerner, HBOC, or Lawson calling any of their customers or end-users "idiots" or "chimps" in or out of their presence? I think you haven't, and there is a good reason for that. At GCS you would hear that on a daily basis, and I can assure you that you would also have a certain amount of stored up anger after being exposed to that.

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  • Re: What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted on January 08, 2007 12:44 AM

    Sorry, but you are wrong in asserting that Asian hospitals do not buy software. Maybe they are not buying software from Cerner/HBOC/Lawson, and they are certainly not buying from GCS, but there are many other players on the market. A good example is Australian IBA Tech who continues to sell their software across the region: http://www.ibatech.com/

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  • Re: What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted by benthere on March 27, 2007 10:43 AM

    RE: The comments from March 14, 2007 05:53 AM

    Dead on the money.

    Just one more example to show what a joke the system is.

    The TEST system is copied from LIVE at the end of each month. All of the patient, financial and clinical information is in TEST and accessible by everyone that has access to TEST. Talk about breach of confidentiality!

    This also prevents any substantial work in TEST since whatever is put there is overwritten monthly.

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  • Re: What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted on April 11, 2007 09:52 AM

    x

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  • Re: What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted by witten on April 11, 2007 11:58 AM

    Here's a quote from the Coderific Terms of Service:

    You agree not to post, submit, or otherwise make available Content: c) that includes personal or identifying information about another person without that person's explicit consent, or otherwise invades another's privacy

    Posting my personal contact information, besides just being a not very nice thing to do, violates the Terms of Service.

    In regards to frequent log rotation, the goal of that policy isn't to protect, support, or otherwise encourage libel. The only reason Coderific rotates logs frequently is to protect the anonymity of those users who chose to remain anonymous, especially those that fear retribution from their employers for posting perfectly factual and legal comments.

    Furthermore, I don't particularly appreciate the legal threats. You of course have every right to post your opinion on this site, as long as it doesn't violate the Terms of Service. But trying to threaten me or the users of this site because your client doesn't like what's been posted here is completely uncalled for. If you think something doesn't belong on this site, I encourage you to post a response to it directly, explaining your point of view, and then use the flagging system to flag it as prohibited if it violates the TOS.

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  • Re: What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted on April 17, 2007 11:06 AM

    Where to start, oh where to start. Management is the key failure of this company, it could be a really great company if certain persons let go, and there are exceptional people that work there that really have dedication and massive amounts of knowledge. However good people leave and management take this as a personal insult, they never sit back and reflect on why these people left, what could they have done to stop this from happening, in their eyes they are traitors. It is a small minded and petty view point and this is what is holding the company back. Management seem to believe it is a great honour to work for this company they seem to have lost the people perspective.

    My advice is to get some really management experience in the company, it is still not too late.

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  • Re: What went wrong with Global Care Solutions? posted on April 23, 2007 08:20 AM

    someone wrote:
    x

    There's a separate thread covering the same topic at http://coderific.com/forums/posts/495?start=0

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