Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, October 26, 2010,
Item 6
We're going to call up number 6 right now.
and those on 30 head this way.
6, approve termination and transition agreement, simplicity health care systems, for an electronic medical records and pharmacy information management system.
Commissioner Davis has a question on item 6.
>> only question -- and my whole point on this particular item is the software.
I understand that these electronic medical situations, we've actually lost the person that would be providing the service as far as maintenance and upkeep of the software.
my question is -- and, of course, it's $175 an hour, I think, it may be going into $275 an hour later.
but my question is what can we do to avoid -- or is there anything we can do to avoid these type of situations from occurring, especially if you have a vendor, a resaler, that's a go between between the county and the actual vendor as far as software is concerned, they end up going out of business, do we have anybody in house on staff that is familiar enough, especially with the i.t.s.
folks, that's familiar enough with this stuff where we don't have to continue to use a consultant that based upon the cost of resale is what the backup is saying, has left, or has -- to provide the resources to accommodate their particular upkeep and maintenance of this particular software.
and this is something that i.t.s.
had a chance to look at before we actually are having to have someone to maintain software.
I知 just kind of concerned because we send the $314,000 deal here and, of course, we terminate it but, of course, we still have a vendor that we depend on for this software and yet the resale -- what's the detail on that?
>> robin osborne with the sheriff's office.
I understand your concern, Commissioner.
the answer to your question is no.
and the reason is for one of the softwares -- softwares -- the medical software that we refer to as e.m.r., it's a very robust soft way, has several components, and it requires different certification levels to be able to program into it.
and the reseller that we bought it from actually had programs they were able to program into it and that's one of the reasons they were chosen and one of the reasons that we're having to terminate the contract is they lost their programmers.
so they no longer have the ability to program to the software either.
so the -- the transition with the hourly rate is just in case we need them on some kind of consultation basis.
they programmed something into it that -- let me back up a little bit.
I知 sorry.
we're terminating the agreement with them and we were -- we have a short-term transition for consultation charges if needed.
because what we're going to do is we're going to come back before the court and contract with the company that actually makes the software.
so there won't be an hourly rate.
they will just provide maintenance and support for the software that they wrote.
so the retailer will be out of the picture completing because they no longer have the resources to not only support it but to complete the project because it's not quite complete.
>> the reason I brought the point up was because there's been more times and not we have different software that's being purchased by whomever here in the county, and yet we don't have anyone from the i.t.s.
portion to support or show support as far as dealing with that particular software.
and here we'll stranglehold again in a situation where I feel that we are wasting money by not looking at the staff to see if our i.t.s.
staff can accommodate the shortfalls or the short comings of someone that in this particular case didn't have the resources to continue operating and maintaining the system.
>> yeah, again, I can only -- I知 sorry.
>> so I知 concerned about that.
and I guess my question is did this ever go to i.t.s.
when it was performed to make sure they could support it?
>> I can only speak to this software and we did not go to i.t.s.
because it's a proprietary software, and most vendors don't allow someone that's not certified or works within their company to program into their software.
we did do a --
>> I apologize.
this item was taken up before itself running down here because I didn't here Commissioner Davis' question.
I went back, I asked bonnie this morning.
this -- this particular software started way back when we were having issues out of the jail with the pharmacist.
we had an outside pharmacist.
>> right.
I remember that.
>> so that sort of started that ball rolling.
we looked at hiring someone in house, we contracted with dp and b.
it was a big deal and a lot of effort on tso and I知 pretty sure i.t.s.
was asked to do some sort of assessment.
we usually ask its to do some sort of assessment to make sure our software will work on the systems, I need to make sure that we did that.
there is i.t.s.
assessment form that we require departments to fill out.
we did do a competitive solicitation on this software.
we put in our requirements and we did receive solicitations and so we went through an evaluation process.
our main contractor was simplicity who subbed with these two other firms that provided the actual software.
one was for the medical casing, and robin is right, simplicity is no longer able to provide the service, so we're going to depend on those two software providers to continue with the maintenance of their software.
that's why this got hung up.
overall on software purchases, a lot of times what happens the departments come, we've got something, it's proprietary, it's is only thing that will work for us.
we have to make judgment calls at this time what kind of money -- I致e got one right now that's $3,000 for the district judges.
they want me to sign the purchase orders so we're in the middle of that saying is it work the risk, not worth the risk.
software procurement in this county has grown exponentially and is going to continue, and yes, we need to do a better job of coordinating with i.t.s.
overall big picture procurements because it's costing us lots of money.
>> that's why I brought it up.
costs us a lot of money.
>> we don't do good planning and we need to do that.
that's some of the issues we've been talking about in the reorganization so those are issues we definitely need to address.
>> this is a critical issue for the sheriff.
>> it's criminal cal.
I move approval.
>> second.
>> just wanted to make sure it's laid ---.
>> any more discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
thank you very much.
thank you all for your patients also.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 2:00 PM
