2. Last of Keane’s Acquired Products
• This week we end (finally!) the story of Keane, looking at the last
two vendors/systems they acquired while building “Threshold:”
– First Coast – Charlie Gibb’s firm from Florida, whose “APaCS”
HIS offered a full financial/clinical suite on IBM AS/400 minis.
– Source Data Systems - (SDS), from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, based
on NCR’s “Mednet” HIS, that ran at over 170 hospitals in the
90s…• The story of First Coast Systems (FCS)
starts with its founder, Charlie Gibbs,
whose career started way back in 1964
(whew, I was only a freshman in college
back then!) when Charlie was a hospital
systems engineer at (where else?) IBM.
• In 1973, Charlie and his wife Donna
started their own firm in Jacksonville
called Gibbs Computer Systems.
3. Pilot Hospital Partnership
• Following a script played out so often
in the HIS industry, Charlie & Donna
partnered with a nearby FLA hospital
to build their “APaCS” HIS:
– Baptist Medical Center
• Heard that before in HIS-tory? Try:
- Lockheed’s MIS at El Camino in CA
- IBM’s “HIS” at Monmouth in NJ
- McAuto’s HFC at OSF in Illinois
- Medipac at Evanston, Illinois
- JS Data at South County in RI
- Meditech at Cape Cod Hospital
- Sentry at Norwegian American
- CSC’s Tandem HIS at Long Beach…
4. What’s an “APaCS?”
• Glad you asked! It’s an “Advanced Patient Care System,” which is so
much better than one of those many tired old PCS-es on the market…
• And for hardware, the Gibbs made the wise choice of IBM minis,
starting with the 3X series in the late 70s & early 80s (like so many
other HIS vendors: JS Data, DCC, AR/Mediquest, etc.), then running
on the hot new AS/400 series mini when it was announced in 1988.
• In 1985, Charlie & Donna
renamed their firm First
Coast Systems (FCS), and
grew APaCS from a basic
financial suite into a true
patient care system,
adding Orders & Results,
Care Plans & Nurses
Notes; even ancillaries
like: RIS, OR, RX, etc.
5. FCS’ Management Team
• Charlie took a page out of PHS’ story by
following the “Previously Hired by SMS”
formula when he hired a K. of P. hero:
– Bob Blades – I remember Bob well
from my SMS days as the ID Manager
for the Delaware Valley office. Bob
became FCS’ National Marketing
Director around 1989, joining:
– Phil Galusha – who had started in
1977 and became Director of Product
Development, later promoted to VP.
• Charlie and Donna rounded out the management team:
- Charlie as Chief Executive Officer, and Donna as the President.
• Know of any other husband & wife teams in the HIS vendor ranks?
- I sure don’t – can anybody out there think of any? Write us!
6. Sales Successes & Rapid Growth
• Being privately held, FCS’s revenue figures were not public
info, but the firm grew rapidly to where by the late 90s, it was
approaching $20M in annual revenue with about 100 FTEs.
• Some other trivia from a 25-year-old RFP response back then:
– About 100 hospital clients, most with financial systems. But
many growing into APaCS evolving suite of clinicals too..
– 8 sales claimed in 1998, 5 new hospital sales in 1997…
– No regional offices – all service/support out of the FLA HQ
• (Shades of Meditech, CPSI, & Epic…)
– Help Keys customized via FCS’ Knowledge Base Navigator
– EDI included E2000 claims manager & Pathways Mat. Man.
– The IBM AS/400 9406 Model 720 offered up to 4MB main
memory, while disk storage ran from 128 to 263 Gigabytes,
and support 50 current out of 240 users (CRTs & printers).
7. David Catches the Eye of Goliath…
• If Mr. HIS-talk had his blog in 1999, the hot story on Nov 22nd
was:
– “Keane Inc. today completed its purchase of Jacksonville's First Coast
Systems
– FCS, which provides software for hospitals, is being merged into Keane's
health care division, and its Jacksonville office will become a Keane branch.
– First Coast's core product, Advanced Patient Care Delivery System (Apacs),
gives medical providers access to patient records at the point of care.
– FCS had $20 million in revenue last year, according to information submitted
to The (Jacksonville) Business Journal for a Dec. 3 list of software developers.
Keane, a publicly traded company, reported revenue of $1 billion in 1998.
– "Both Keane and First Coast Systems offer high-quality products and services
to the health care market, but use different technology to deliver those
products, effectively creating two different market solutions," said Raymond
W. Paris, vice president of Keane's health care division. "As a result, this is an
extremely complementary acquisition, strengthening Keane's position."
– The First Coast purchase was the seventh for Keane in 1999.”
• Charlie & Donna probably made out pretty darn well, considering
8. Eventual Dénouement…
• FCS clients did pretty well at first, especially with Y2K looming on
the Horizon (HBO pun intended!). Keane sold & supported APaCS
well into the mid-2000s, under the name of “Insights” and
upgraded to run on IBM’s latest boxes: the i-Series then P-Series.
• At the 2009 HIMSS,
Keane announced
“Optimum” a combo
of the award-winning
PHS “PatCom”
system featured in
last week’s episode,
and their self-
developed “iMed”
clinical suite.
• No mention of FCS or
Insights since…
9. Source Data Systems (SDS)
• SDS was founded in 1978 by Bob
Barnett Jr. CEO, and Gary Ford,
President, in Cedar Rapids, IA.
• The system ran on NCR minis with
NCR’s UNIX-based “MedNet” HIS
developed at pilot Mercy Hospital,
along with an “InfiNet” repository.
• They eagerly embraced interfacing to
standalones in Lab, RX, etc., rather
than trying to develop every HIS app.
• Client base grew to ≈170 mostly small
hospitals, with ≈125 FTEs and annual
revenue to about $11M by the time
they were acquired by Keane in 1995.
• Sunset in 1997, just before Y2K…
10. Mean & Nasty?
• Sound mean of Keane to sunset SDS just a few
years before Y2K? Well, they weren’t alone:
– SMS sunset “Allegra” (nee Computer Synergy)
in the late 90s when the cost of upgrading it
Invision, Novius and Medseries 4 was too much
– I’m sure there were many more products other
vendors sunset back in those panic days too!
• So before you shake your head about these poor
HIS pioneers who got hurt, just what is your
hospitals doing about ICD-10 and Stage 2 of
MU?
• Does your agreement with your HIS vendor
hold them accountable for complying with
these imminent upgrades? Within the time
frames mandated?? And at no cost to
11. Next Week: Not Keane!
• Next week we resume our march through today’ HIS vendors: where
they got their systems and how many still run today, with:
– QuadraMed – formed from a host of acquisitions, most notably
being Shelly Dorenfest & Ron Apprahamian’s Compucare.
– UltiCare – the heart of our story, developed by Ralph Korpman’s
Health Data Sciences corporation from San Bernadino, CA.
• Anybody got any info on Ron or Ralph (I’m in touch with Shelly…),
please call (505/466-4958) or write (vciotti@hispros.com)
• And in case you missed any prior
episodes of our HIS-tory series
(or want to check out where
you’re HIS vendor originally got
their stuff), just hop on over to
our web site and enjoy any past
episode at: HISPros.com
