I am pleasantly surprised that my blog receives 30 – 60 unique visitors a day. I have to admit that I have become a bit addicted at looking at the logs to see what I can learn about the visitors and how they arrived here.
I had to laugh out loud when I saw one person arrived here by searching “i hate meditech” on MSN’s search engine. I can only wonder what caused such an action. BTW, I am ranked 6th on that search even though that exact phrase (or any such connotation) does not appear on my blog.
Speaking of MEDITECH, they are frequent visitors here. I am sure my account exec is keeping an eye on me (Hi Priscilla). But, it appears other MEDITECHers are visiting too. Maybe even Howard Messing, who I have never met.
Some of my other vendors that have stopped by include Valco, McKesson, Quadramed, and Wellogic.
I have also received some visits from organizations that may have been less than thrilled with the attention that I gave them. Even though the Leapfrog Group and Avaya have been here, they did not respond to my posts.
I also get emails from people that discovered me through my blog and want to sell me something. I am slightly more open to listening to somebody that took the time to learn about me, than someone mis-pronouncing my last name off of a call list. Still, that isn’t very interested.
But, it appears that most visitors are like-minded healthcare IT professionals looking for an exchange of ideas and some fresh thinking on tricky topics. A few visitors are from my own organization. Some visitors are with competing organizations (Aurora, not ThedaCare yet). But most from hospitals and health systems in other parts of the country and the world.
Traffic really began to become noticeable when I became a part of the healthcare IT blogoshpere. Other, more established sites linked to me and referenced my posts. I appreciate the attention they have brought my posts. If you want to be exposed to other healthcare IT bloggers the best starting point is Shahid Shah’s HITSphere.
Candid CIO 
Will, thanks for pointing people to our HITSphere site (a play on “Health IT Blogosphere”). Hopefully it’s been useful as a link source for you and other bloggers.
By the way, an intersting service I’ve setup is a link to Frappr.com (see the “Group Map” link on my sidebar at Health IT Guy). It’s basically a way to find out not what company a person is coming from but what geographical location they’re coming from.
I was thinking of adding such as service at HITSphere as well. Just thought you might find it interesting as well.
Yes, Will, I do read your blog. I, too, wonder what MEDITECH has done to provoke the search you mention.
The occasional cynical view of vendors aside (or at least this vendor), I agree with much of what you write. Though there are an overwhelmingly large amount of healthcare and technolgy blogs and information online, there is not much to track specifically geared towards our industry. It’s valuable to see many viewpoints so I appreciate your efforts, even if they are not always flattering to MEDITECH. I hope we do get to meet in person sometime. Howard
What can you tell me about Valco-
I recently found your blog. As a vendor of content management software, with Medical Records being a majority of our business, I need to know what our clients and others really need in document storage. Some just need microfilm, but most are looking toward the future and want a true EMR, but do not have the money for a full McKesson or Cerner level package. Other have been sold a limited packages and are not faced with what to do next. I have run into Meditech installations and have heard the good and the bad. But it is not Meditech that was the trouble as much a VAR that sold a solution, but didn’t do enough homework with the client to give them what they needed for today and the future.
Your former account exec checks in on you from time to time as well, either before or after HISTalk … I do enjoy your viewpoint and appreciate your insights, as always. Cheers.
MAW
I found your website with “I hate MEDITECH” search. Is your hospital using the system or have you had posting regarding it.
I came here by hating Meditech. Here is why. We are implementing Meditech 6.0. I am designing the ER part of it and it is broken.
Meditech’s staff in Boston answer to everything is “I’ll have to ask my supervisor.” “I don’t know.” or “That’s the way it is desighed”. Order indicators on the trackers have never worked from the time C/S was implemented, and the classes to design programs by Meditech staff is worthless.
All the meetings we have had with Meditech have been sales pitches. Meditech doesn’t support hardware like Ipads, even though they advertised the use of an Ipad on their web site.
The interface to build forms is not WYSIWYG, so fromatting forms in what looks to be a 1980 Wordstar based meditor does not match what actually prints.
Meditechs excuse for this is that “other places don’t have standard size paper” All I can say is “What???”
Meditech does not like when the clients they have talk to each other, and are very unhelpful when it comes to that.
The recommended Dell Perot consultants were taking the same classes we had, so they are just as lost.
Building a assessment takes about 5 additional tasks that shouldn’t have to be done. There is no ability to go back into the same place in your program when doing group responses, instances, or any other build.
Standard content is 90% unusable with items never used, spelling errors, and incomprehensible names like “9 hole peg hand test” and the even better “#”.
Meditech doesn’t interface well with Omnicell, MobiLab, or anything else.
Don’t make a lot of effort making forms and documents pretty in Word, it won’t translate over.
Sure, our CIO likes it because he doesn’t have to use it on a daily basis. The RN’s hate Magic, and I am afraid that 6.0 will lose all its charm quickly.
Meditech has not provided us a single solution to our answers.
Sure the campus is VERY pretty. The pond in back is beautiful, and the art and statues are world class. They feed you well in Boston, but all in all, I would sure think twice or three times before I entertained Meditech as my EMR client.