I have some sources within the newly acquired Emageon offices in Birmingham. It helps to have trained at UAB, the incubator of what eventually became Emageon PACS.
It seems that Amicas will close this office, and will let go several of the folks that work there, albeit with fair severance packages. My understanding is that user support remains pretty much intact, so you Emageon customers need not worry at this point.
No doubt this is a necessary move, and all my inside contacts are expressing understanding of this fact, and hold no ill-will toward Amicas. After all, if Amicas demonstrates the expected hybrid strength following the acquisition of Emageon, they might get the chance to return. Well, maybe. My crystal ball isn't so great with business issues. But these are good people and they will land on their feet. I wish I had enough PACS business to hire them myself!
I guess the rule in business is to do what you must do, no matter how difficult that might be. Sort of the way it is in medicine as well.
7 comments :
Seeing as that I am an Emageon support employee...intact is a very incorrect statement. We will all be gone by September and Amicas will replace all the current support with engineers that have no idea how the Emageon Pacs works...we shall see how fast customers blow up. :)
I concur with what was said above. They cut a big portion of the clincal application brain trust. I would also suggest this means that, despite statements to the contrary, they never had any intention to do more than maintain Emageon viewer(radiology) for any length of time beyond end of life. Certainly wouldn't expect any improvement or bug fixes either. I feel bad for the customers, especially those currently sitting on unstable versions.
I have a source inside AMICAS and am told that the Emageon support team in Birmingham is not simply being cast out but are being given the chance to relocate as the support services are being consolidated at one location (PACS anyway.) To be fair, if Birmingham was my home, I wouldn't be thrilled about the prospect of moving to Daytona....
Newman is correct...they are being given the "opportunity" to relocate however few (if any) are going to do so. Emageon tried to make the support team move to Wisconsin a few years ago and that blew up in their face as no one agreed to move then either. If Amicas thinks they can realistically transfer the knowledge necessary to support the Emageon systems without the B'ham folks after Sept. 30, they're about to learn a hard lesson and the customers will suffer.
Yes, I thought it was odd how much middle management remained, and how many people with actual, product knowledge were let go. I think they are just trying to cover all the "ologies", claim customer base, make it look like a nice slick package, and turn around and sell all of it back to seimens and be done with it...
Emageon customers should be very worried. Most of them currently have unstable systems with the writing on the wall that their next "upgrade" will be to Amicas, which is nothing other than a forklift to say the least. Dalai, you give GE a hard time (deservedly so) with their "ugrade" to DI......well get ready for Emag customers to leave in droves when their support agreements exprire. You know that repalcement market everyone is talking about? The biggest replacements are going to be by former Emageon customers going elsewhere.
I am a PACS Administrator at an Emageon Site. I can verify that I still get support. It has slowed some and I know that some layoffs have occurred, but they are still there.
My customer service rep is doing a great job at keeping our organization informed. September 1st is the projected date that the call center in Birmingham will close and the calls will shift to the Amicas Daytona Beach facility.
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