An Update on the Kaiser HealthConnect Project

Veteran readers of Lab Soft News may remember a flurry of activity in the November-December, 2006, time period regarding the Kaiser HealthConnect project (see: Kaiser & Epic Respond to Justen Deal's E-Criticism; Is Kaiser Hijacking the Blogosphere?). Much of the controversy related to a young Kaiser employee name Justen Deal who surfaced as an IT whistle-blower and blogged about the total cost of the HealthConnect project, the periodic unplanned and prolonged computer downs, and the rather slow roll-out of the inpatient Epic software to hospitals in the Kaiser chain.

Mr. HIStalk provides us with the following update on the HealthConnect project:

Kaiser says its HealthConnect outpatient rollout is finished, with all 8.7 million enrollees having access, but inpatient is installed in only 13 of 36 hospitals. They admit to its $4 billion cost, which I believe was angrily denied when that number was first estimated by outsiders. Maintenance is $1 billion (!!). The hospitals and health plan announce a 64% net income drop in Q1 because of investment losses. Still, a $250 million quarterly profit for a "non-profit" in one quarter isn’t too shabby (imagine if they weren’t spending $1 billion on HealthConnect maintenance).

Here's some additional information from the article referenced by Mr. HIStalk above on the outpatient rollout:

But Kaiser still has a ways to go on the inpatient side. Officials said 13 of its 36 hospitals (34 of them in California) have installed the EHR software, giving 3.2 million enrollees the advantages of an inpatient EHR system. Some 14 hospitals are slated to do so this year, including 13 in the Golden State and one in the Portland, Ore., metropolitan area. The remaining nine hospitals, including one in Hawaii, will follow in 2009 and early 2010, said Kaiser spokeswoman Ravi Poorsina.

So Kaiser has thus far spent $4 billion in capital on HealthConnect, is incurring $1 billion yearly in operating expenses, and has deployed the inpatient EMR in only half of its hospitals. I suspect that this project has already set some sort of record for healthcare, or even all large-scale computer projects, perhaps even rivaling the military's periodic and often ill-fated electronic medical record initiatives.