From my vantage point over the past year or two, the CEO of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) appears to have been extremely entrepreneurial in the area of health information technology. I decided to perform a simple Google search using the the terms Pittsburgh and Cerner. Here is a link to the results of the search and below some selected recent examples of just a few of the deals that have been cut.
- Here is an article from this past May describing how UPMC and Cerner have agreed to establish a three-year joint initiative to create and commercialize new health care information technology
- Here is a link to an announcement that UPMC is hosting a two-day meeting of Cerner's Physician Solutions Users Group. The article describes UPMC as one of Cerner's largest customers that has worked closely with the company in its effort to implement an electronic health record (EHR) throughout the UPMC system of 19 hospitals and 225 affiliated physician practices.
- Here is a link to an article about now Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh is now offering its patients with type 1 diabetes a way to monitor, record, and transmit vital blood glucose readings from home. Children’s is one of 28 hospitals in the country partnering with Cerner to offer this online diabetes management tool.
And now comes this item from HIStalk (here is the link to the original article):
Businesses are falling all over themselves to strike deals with Arab countries that are now even richer due to that $3 a gallon gas you're buying. Among them: UPMC, which will pocket $100 million over 4 1/2 years for helping Qatar with its emergency medical system. They'll share their alleged expertise in electronic medical records, which would make Qatar a logical candidate since UPMC's way takes a lot of money.
So what are all of these deals worth to the Board of Directors of UPMC, putting aside any show of appreciation that might come from Neal Patterson and other software executives in companies such as IBM? I am glad that you asked that question because I have the exact answer (link here):
Median pay is a better way of evaluating compensation [for healthcare executives] in Allegheny County [Pennsylvania]... because the average here is skewed by pay for Jeffrey Romoff, the CEO of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. During fiscal 2005, Mr. Romoff earned $2.88 million in compensation, or more than one-fourth of the $10.26 million earned collectively by CEOs at the 17 hospitals and two health systems in Allegheny County that reported salary information.
I might suggest here that all of the C-level healthcare executives in the Pittsburgh vicinity should immediately adopt Jeffrey Romoff as their patron saint and periodically utter a brief prayer that he should enjoy good health and a long life.
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