I've been gone almost a year and I really didn't have any thought about leaving one of these until I recently started getting steady streams of texts from people who used to be on my team asking if I had leads for jobs in the industry or where I am now. Then, I read there was a layoff. At that point, I felt compelled to say something to try and lend some unvarnished thoughts to people pondering their options or thinking of joining Meditech. That's the main thing lacking there now, transparency and a common decency towards the staff and I think there is some level of responsibility to those of us who have left recently to provide that to those who are now in the shoes we were in the last few years. The Meditech of yesteryear is long deceased and while it's popular to blame that on the current CEO, it's not her fault. Whoever decided that she was the leader of the future was flat out mistaken and that mistake has not been corrected, the current state is on the shoulders of those decision makers. If you think back to the roll out of 6.0, specifically the ordering product, the same product that a prominent west coast then-customer left over...the same ordering product that left a prominent New England customer in down time for three weeks after their conversion from C/S. That product was overseen by the current CEO in the product development division. In corporate America, people who oversee clear failures do not achieve promotions. They don't necessarily need to be fired or demoted, but they don't keep going up. 6.0 was the turning point from which Meditech really cannot recover, there was a steady stream of prominent customer exits because of the product as well as consolidation in the industry which saw community hospitals going to Epic because they were forced into mergers with IDN's who gave them a financial life line. The person who oversaw the clear failure of development of a competitive 6.0 product now runs the company and the parallels of decline that came with 6.0 are now widely seen within the organization itself. Not good. A company of almost 3500 people has to have an HR division, full stop. There is none, which leaves the HR'ing to the front line supervisors and managers who are bogged down in the minutia of their own work. The ombudsman concept is great for a newspaper, not a technology company. Speaking of, there are two ombudsman...one who is friends with the CEO and another who is a gossip hound. Imagine going to one of them to air a legitimate concern? I knew every time something was said to the ombudsman that was said by someone on my team, whether it related to me or not. Promoting from within probably was decent in the 80's and 90's but its a dead concept that hurts Meditech more than it helps. Most managers and directors are only versed in Meditech, which is fine but when you rely on those people to make crucial decisions, they only make them from a Meditech prism devoid of market perspective. That prism is also deeply rooted in doing things how Meditech has frequently done them or colored in a way to enhance ones own longevity. It also fosters "who you know" and not "what you can do". That is how you end up with directors who were once taken out of manager roles they were struggling with. Ten years goes by, your friend becomes a VP and out of the smoke you emerge with a director title. The number of people with long term vision above director level is exactly two. One of them has one foot out the door to a well deserved retirement and the other is an inspirational leader who probably should be the CEO. After that, you have a bunch of overmatched VP's and middling AVP's playing out the string. There is no future leadership should the company remain in it's current form. I think lastly and most importantly, there is a lack of trust in anyone to do their job and from there a lack of transparency permeates. A time tracking system was introduced in recent years, it is entirely useless. I looked at it about 0 times to make consequential decisions. I relied it on it 0 times in evaluating people's work and their abilities. It was insulting to the staff who are forced to spend time documenting and to the intelligence of the management staff in making it a centerpiece tool of evaluation. The recent layoff was conducted by email. No, really, it was. Giving management teams 27 seconds notice before a mass email regarding an important topic or policy coming straight from the top.
