In response to my note yesterday concerning Epic and Judith Faulkner's opposition to the proposed HHS rules about EHR interoperability, a reader of this blog, Ivan Miller, submitted the following comment:
Faulkner replicated Steve Jobs business model. He made a proprietary, locked system that he guaranteed would work-- and consumers were willing to pay a huge price for his product. Healthcare providers were no different. There is one notable difference however -- Jobs focused passionately on his product, and the free market rewarded his innovation. Judy was placed as chair of the EHR oversight/ interoperability committee because of her political contributions. At a time when government was meddling in private business, she leveraged corruption to sell her outdated/ obsolete product. Ironically enough, her company has yet to be investigated for a monopoly.
In a previous note posted in 2011, I commented about Faulkner's political clout (see: Judith Faulkner, EMR Interoperability, and Washington IT Politics). Here is an excerpt from i1:
A recent investigative piece questions the fact that Judith Faulkner, CEO of Epic, has been appointed to the 13-member national Health Information Technology Policy Committee(see: Democrat donor gets federal health policy slot despite conflicts of interest). She is described in the piece as a "Democrat donor" with Epic having donated nearly $300,000 to Democrats since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
It's commonly understood that Faulkner "owns" the Wisconsin congressional delegation and it will do anything to support Epic. It will be very interesting to see to what extent these officials will support her in this battle with HHS. Her position runs counter to patient consumerism. Many useful rules and legislative initiatives these days are subject to attack, driven by corporate greed. Faulkner is now even considering suing HHS over this interoperability matter (see: Epic may sue HHS over interoperability rules concerns, Judy Faulkner says). Here's a quote from Epic from this article that may provide some assurance about the purity of Epic's motives: "Epic's focus is on saving lives and improving healthcare for patients, and we have no interest in pursuing a lawsuit."
The key difference between Jobs/Apple and Faulker/Epic is that Apple sells to consumers, whereas Epic sells to enterprises. In that sense Epic is much more like Microsoft than Apple. Epic and SQLServer are both insanely great products from the perspective of CIOs.
Posted by: Brian R. Jackson | February 14, 2020 at 10:26 AM