Yet another multi-million dollar (this time close to 0.5 billion) proprietary health-IT system fails to meet expectations. This time at the VA hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. According to this AP article, 41 surgeries were postponed due to a proprietary financial system malfunction: ‘…Bay Pines became a test site in October for a new Veterans Affairs computer system designed to control finances, vendor payments and supply inventories. Problems with the CoreFLS program prompted the hospital last week to postpone all elective surgeries. Nelson said the $450 million software package was not properly tested and Bay Pines administrators were instructed to scrap the old system, leaving the hospital with no backup…’ The VA has a long tradition of success using non-proprietary software. One can only speculate why they have ignored their own history. This one has the usual smells of health-IT failure: mandate from above what technology will be used, knee-jerk move towards proprietary software and massive expenditure followed by abysmal failure. Thanks to Gary Kantor for this link.