Picis, the subject of recent acquisition rumors, names Rockingham Memorial Hospital
user of the year (press release). This may seem like another vacuous marketing gimmick
at first blush, but there's an interesting lesson to be drawn. Vendors
like Picis have complex and highly flexible products designed to
provide benefits to as broad a range of hospitals as possible. During
the sales and implementation process, vendors assess needs and
configure their product to provide the greatest benefit. Sometimes
hospitals think they know best and pass on the vendor's advice, using
the system in their own way. Hospitals rarely know the vendor's product
better than they do, and I've seen examples of hospitals misusing
products to the detriment of patient safety.

So really, it's a worth while effort to find exemplary customers who
can be held up as examples of good product use. If you check out the
Rockingham link above you'll see the hospital seems pretty well run in
general; no big surprise there.