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."

Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History.

I don't know if Judy still tries to compare Epic with Amazon, but the comparison is more accurate than I originally thought.

Recently, I ran across Amazon's slogan: "Work Hard. Have fun. Make History." It bears a certain resemblance to Epic's slogan: "Do Good. Have Fun. Make Money." I'm not sure whose slogan came first, but I'm curious about who copied whom.

So I started doing some research. I found this article with an image of Amazon's slogan emblazoned in 9000-point font in its warehouses fulfillment centers. It didn't give me a date for the slogan, but it did describe working conditions and a management strategy that is all too familiar.

Since Judy also compares her company to Google and Facebook, here are their slogans:

Google: Do No Evil.
Facebook: Move Fast With Stable Infra. Previously, it was Move Fast, Break Things.

More Legal Stuff

Epic is suing Indian consulting firm, Tata, alleging that the consultants were stealing information from the UserWeb and passing it to an Indian EMR vendor. While Epic is the big fish in the American pond, Tata is bigger still, and their lawyers don't sound like they're willing to be pushed around.

The discovery process for the lawsuit promises to be interesting--Epic is going to have to prove its allegations (if my armchair-lawyer experience is correct), and their fiercely private stuff will have to get public scrutiny. A linked article from the link above explains how to view legal documents for free, and encourages everyone to read Epic's legal stuff. If Epic is forced to operate in a more public manner, they might have to start treating their employees and their customers with a little more trust and respect.

I expect Epic will drop the case, unless Judy (in her role as Obama's crony on the Federal Health IT Advisory Panel) is able to get some special confidential privileges.

More Class-Action Lawsuits Against Epic

This just in: Lawsuit Seeks Overtime Pay for Epic Technical Writers

There are two new lawsuits suing Epic for overtime wages, pretty much identical except for which writers each lawsuit affects. The one lawsuit is for writers who left Epic before April 2, 2014 (when an arbitration agreement went into Epic's employment contract); the other is for writers still employed after April 2.

The article didn't say which law firm was involved, but some high-end detective work (I googled James Jansen lawyer) showed that it's Habush, Habush, and Rottier. If you're a current or past writer, you ought to contact them.

Interesting article about Epic

You ought to read it:  10 Things to Know About Epic

As always with Epic articles, the comments are informative.

Epic's Customers

I've been working on a list of Epic's customers. I thought it might be useful to those seeking employment after their non-competes have expired. I struggled with how to format it in a useful manner, and then decided just to throw in the towel. It's better to teach folks how to do research than to do the research for them. (Also, more than any other post I've published, this caused no small amount of fear of Epic instituting some kind of shady repurcussions that would affect my current employment.)

Anyway, I used these search terms in google:

• epic implementation 
• "epic implementation" 
• epic systems corporation clients 

And then I just read the comments on various articles and if that triggered further searches, I rolled with it. One such comment on a nursing blog said this:

you can download an app in your iphone "mychart" it will show you the states that have EPIC program

The MyChart app is available on Android now, and it lists each organization by the state that they serve.

If it's full time work you want, start your job search with a trip to the app store of your choice.

And if anyone else wants to publish a full or partial list, I'll link to it.