Cerner gets DoD Contract

Full story over on healthcareitnews.com. Since Judy has all the appearances of a shady businesswoman (see my previous posts on the subject), I'm pleased that she did not win the contract. Since there's been so much conflict of interest with other stuff, given Judy's presence on Obama's EHR group, I'm glad that in this situation, Epic gets to be above board.

Anecdotally, Cerner is garbage, and the DoD has admitted faulty software choices in the past. In 5 years, I expect they'll be transitioning to Epic.

The QA Lawsuit--Aftermath

Several weeks ago, I received this comment on the Epic and the Non-Compete post:

You might want to consider writing a new blog post about this feature of the story. One thing that was reported in the paper is that Epic is "encouraging" QAers to donate the money to Access Community Health. Epic's communications to QAers about the settlement have been very good at those things Epic does to explain how you can give the money to Access, or keep it for yourself, but choose carefully. One quickly gets a sense of what the "careful" choice is.

What I'm surprised nobody has mentioned is that Judy's husband, Dr. Gordon Faulkner, is a physician for Access. I think Access is a worthy cause and have nothing bad to say about them. They do a lot of good work in the community. However, something feels very wrong that Epic has settled a court case over accusations of misdeeds towards its employees, and is exerting influence over those very same employees to send that settlement money to the employer of the founder's husband. If this isn't illegal, it at least feels unethical. And a bit arrogant and ignorant on Judy's part to think that it wouldn't be noticed.

Conflict of interest is nothing new for Judy, but this takes it to a new low. It reminds me of those mining towns where everyone worked in the mine. The mine would own the housing, run the only store, and pay wages in store credit. It was a more creative form of slavery, and it's one of the reasons why labor unions were necessary.


Judy could have picked any charity. Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, American Red Cross, Madison Ballet, heck, even Planned Parenthood and Organizing for Obama America would have been acceptable choices in order to avoid conflicts of interest. Instead, it's "Take the money that you won because I'm not paying you what you deserve, and give it to my husband."