Big employers' initiative on personal health records stumbles

Dossia is in a dispute with its vendor over why the project has not yielded a PHR.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. Aug. 13, 2007.

A large employer-based personal health records initiative that once promised to push doctors into accepting the technology is now struggling to push itself out of the gate.

Dossia, a consortium that includes Wal-Mart, Intel Corp., Applied Materials, BP America, Cardinal Health and Pitney Bowes, has been working since last year on a major PHR project for its combined 2.5 million-strong work force.

But as internal disputes with its vendor, Portland, Ore.-based Omnimedix Institute, led to a restraining order against Omnimedix, the future of the project became unclear.

PHR advocates said other employers shouldn't be discouraged, as employer-based PHRs are still a worthy and realistic goal. And a spokeswoman for Dossia says the project still will move forward, despite the roadblocks and possible litigation.

Omnimedix was the target of a preemptive restraining order filed by Dossia in late June after Omnimedix reportedly threatened to file suit against Dossia for missed payments. The group asked a judge to approve an order requiring any suits filed by Omnimedix against Dossia to be sealed and preventing the vendor from speaking publicly about its business arrangements with the consortium. An Oregon circuit court judge approved the restraining order in July. As of press time in late July, no suits had been filed by Omnimedix.

Neither party would discuss with American Medical News the source of the dispute. But according to InformationWeek, which first posted news of the Dossia-Omnimedix falling out on its Web site July 11, money was at the center of it. The technology-oriented publication reported that Omnimedix believed it wasn't getting paid enough for the work it had done, while Dossia believed Omnimedix wasn't doing enough and had demanded it refund payments the consortium had made.