We demoed / trialed UTD at the behest of our medical staff. They gave us
all the "good news," a "special price" (with multiple strings, of course),
hemmed and hawed and stalled giving us the quote we repeatedly asked them
for that would include remote access - for almost 6 weeks. Our docs
revolted and said - no remote access, you take a hike. We paid for
imedicine.com instead (for a tiny fraction of the price, including
effortless remote access anywhere anytime), and its usage is growing
rapidly. Have a look at it instead.


On 11/2/06, Susan Klawansky <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 >
 > Hi Medlibbers - I MUST share this information; it's just too unbelievable.
 >
 > We've subscribed to UpToDate for several years, and our renewal is upon
 > us.
 > We were recently sent a form to complete, in which we had to verify that
 > the statistics we submit to the AHA (upon which UTD bases its hospital
 > subscription costs) were accurate, and that all our satellite locations
 > were
 > represented in those figures.
 >
 > So, what, we lied to the AHA, but will now tell the truth to UTD???
 >
 > In addition, it appears that UTD went trolling on our website, and
 > discovered several satellite locations they didn't know about. Those
 > locations don't see patients (they are research facilities within larger
 > office buildings in the same city as our hospital) and are the result of
 > insufficient space on our main campus. So, UTD asked for numbers of
 > physicians who work out of those locations.
 >
 > After scrounging around for the numbers, I reported back - 27 physicians
 > work there part time (the rest of the time they're back on our main campus
 > or elsewhere).
 >
 > Today, UTD called me, and here's what they're offering: pretty much the
 > same
 > price (roughly $XX,XXX) as last year for all the locations they previously
 > knew about AND ANOTHER $XX,XXX to cover the 27 physicians who work part
 > time
 > out of the two research facilities (because they are not covered in the
 > patient statistics). Or, I can cut those locations out, so when a doc is
 > standing on our main campus she can use UTD, but when she's standing in
 > her
 > research office she can't. Though all our locations are on a single
 > computer network, our IT staff would have to find a way to restrict access
 > to UTD to those two locations AND certify to UTD that they had done so.
 >
 > ARE THESE PEOPLE INSANE?? Really, in all my years of doing this work,
 > I've
 > never encountered such irrational, paranoid, punitive behavior in a
 > vendor.
 > Sure, we all know about the greed and the incompetence of some vendors,
 > but
 > this rises to a whole new level of arrogance.
 >
 > Toward the end of the conversation, they told me that our usage was three
 > times greater than other hospitals of our type, implying that either there
 > was some kind of malfeasance going on, or that we must be prepared to pay
 > for our crime of actually using their product.
 >
 > Just for some basic information, we're a private, not-for-profit pediatric
 > teaching hospital. We are unaffiliated (in terms of ownership) with any
 > other institution. We have a single administration.
 >
 > This kind of egregious behavior has to be shared. I pray fervently that
 > sooner rather than later, I can dump UTD in favor of something else. Of
 > course when I said that to my callers, they had no response. I don't
 > think
 > they would care in the least.
 >
 > Susan Klawansky
 > Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center
 > Seattle, WA
 > [log in to unmask]
 >




--


Julie Stielstra, MLS
Supervisor, Knowledge Resource Library
Central DuPage Hospital
25 N Winfield Rd
Winfield, IL 60190
phone 630-933-4536
fax 630-933-4530
email [log in to unmask]