This document discusses the history of "boutique" consulting firms that specialized in healthcare information systems (HIS) in the 1970s and 1980s. It profiles four pioneering boutique firms: Sheldon I. Dorenfest & Associates, known for their comprehensive industry guide; The Kennedy Group founded by early HIS leader O. George Kennedy; Ron Johnson & Associates which consulted vendors; and Healthcare Management Counselors, a dominant New York firm. The document also lists many other smaller boutique firms and individual consultants from this era that specialized in the emerging HIS field.

1. “H.I.S.-tory” by Vince Ciotti
© 2011 H.I.S. Professionals, LLC, all rights reserved
Episode # 34: HIS Consultants,
Part 2: The “Boutique”
Firms

2. So who dreamed up that name!?
• Well, it sure wasn’t the small firms themselves, but rather the
“Big Eight,” who realized the word “boutique” had derogatory
connotations they would like to stick on their competitors:
– Small in size, thus raising the fear of being too small…
– Specialists, so maybe not able to meet all your needs…
– Feminine-sounding, not like the big macho audit guys…
• In fact, the small firms who specialized in HIS had much to offer:
– They knew hospitals only, inside and out:
– Not banking, manufacturing, insurance, etc.
– They knew HIS vendors intimately:
– The gory details of SMS, HBO, Meditech, etc.
– Their staff were generally HIS veterans:
– Few of the “Juniors” that populated Big 8’s.
• In truth, both had their pros & cons, to this day…

3. Who Were The First Boutiques?
• There were dozens of HIS boutique firms formed in the
70s & 80s, that specialized in the HIS industry alone.
• Four of the pioneering firms we’ll profile were:
- Sheldon I. Dorenfest & Associates (SIDA),
founded by one of the true HIS mavens…
- The Kennedy Group, founded by O. George
Kennedy, who sadly passed way too soon…
- Ron Johnson & Associates, whose eponymous
founder was an early MIS and McAuto vet…
- Healthcare Management Counselors (HMC) a
powerhouse in NYC and its suburb: Florida…
These four all made it pretty big, giving the Big
Eight a run for their money during the 80’s, and
many live on today, merged or acquired…

4. Sheldon I. Dorenfest & Associates
• I start with Shelly’s firm because it’s where I started consulting
myself, way back in 1985. But SIDA itself started much earlier:
– Remember an early HIS-tory episode on minis that featured
Compucare? Well (as Sheldon so often starts a sentence…),
it was founded in 1969 by him and Ron Apprahamian on the
brilliant premise that “Facilities Management” offered the
perfect partners to build an HIS: hospitals themselves!
• Instead of programmers working in a vacuum at HQ
trying to guess what users wanted, FM clients could
show programmers on site just what they needed...
– Sheldon sold his Compucare holdings around 1975,
and started consulting to both vendors and hospitals.
– He offered hospitals the usual MIS Strategic Plans,
System Selections, Installation assistance, etc.
– But it was his offering to vendors that really shone:

5. The Dorenfest “Guide”
• I first encountered the Dorenfest “Guide” at McAuto in 1980:
– Sheldon contacted me in St. Louis where I was Marketing
Services Manager under Art Randall. He sold us his “Guide,” the
first and most amazingly thorough study of the HIS industry.
– He created it by surveying 250 “Sample Hospitals” who were
either consulting clients of his, or willing to share their HIS plans,
expenses, staffing, application portfolios, vendors products, etc.
• The result was a tome as valuable as it was thick,
with hundreds of tables & text covering every aspect
of HIS, from clinical app soup to financial app nuts.
• He later expanded it to cover 3,000 hospitals over
150 beds, with data stored in a custom data base
that could be sliced & diced by vendor clients...
• He eventually sold it to HIMSS in the mid 2000s,
where it lives on today as their “HIMSS Analytics.”

6. “The Kennedy Group”
• O. George Kennedy was an early member of the Technicon team –
remember the pioneering MIS (Medical Information System) EMR?
– Other early HIS-tory heroes who worked at Technicon included
Dr. Ralph Korpman of later UltiCare fame, as well as the founder
of our next Boutique firm who we’ll meet in a few more slides…
• I first met George at HIS Inc. in Brooklyn where he visited us for a
look at our mainframe software – I can still see his glazed eyes
around 4PM in the afternoon after watching 8 hours of demo
screens… • George was a Ph.D. and leveraged his deep
knowledge of the HIS industry to build The
Kennedy Group, founded in Chicago in 1978.
• When I left HIS Inc., I considered working for
him at $400 a day (which he billed out at $800
per day) – it seemed a fortune at the time, even
after the 50% mark-up! Of course, today…

7. Ron L. Johnson & Associates
• Ron worked at Technicon and was a McAuto super-salesman in
the 1970’s before he formed his consultancy.
• His claim to fame was to consult to vendors:
– He wrote a series of annual reports starting
around 1984 that profiled leading vendors:
• Products, pricing, history, strategy, etc.
• I remember buying one once for some vendor, and marveling at
the wealth of detail. Unlike SIDA’s Guide that covered hospitals,
Ron dug deep into vendors, including strengths & weaknesses.
– Which was challenging as we vendors always felt he never had
enough of our former, and far too many of our latter…
– and vice – versa about our nasty, weak, pathetic competitors!
• But Ron always told it like it was, to his great credit, and was still
working as of just a few years ago. Maybe he still is today?!

8. Healthcare Management Counselors
• Formed by Peter Weil & Helen Levine in ‘82, HMC was a
dominant boutique consultancy, specializing in the demanding
NYC market.
• Peter had a nice accent that lent a charming air of continental
sophistication to his astute pronouncements on HIS vendors.
• Helen was an attractive and intelligent young lady in an age of
male dominance, one of the first female consulting super-stars.• Naturally, as the male chauvinist pig that I
am, I got to know Helen more than Peter.
• She had worked her way up through the
corporate ranks of Exxon and then learned
consulting at Booze, Allen and Hamilton.
• HMC eventually merged with Kurt Salmon &
Associates in 1997, ending their long run.
• Another lady super-star at HMC was Elaine
Remmlinger, left, a later VP at KSA…

9. The “Other” Boutiques
• So who were the other HIS Boutique consultancies besides SIDA,
Kennedy, Johnson & HMC? Here are a few from a 1985 study:
• So, was that it, the Big Eight and the Boutiques, for HIS consulting?
Hardly! Anyone who lost their job could hang out a shingle…
• Advanced
Computer
Services
• Automated
Health Care
Systems
• Cedar
Consultants
• Computer
Management
Systems
• Computer
Power
• Corporate
Information
Systems
• Dakota
Programs
• Data
Processing
Consultants
• Executive
Consulting
Group
• Health Central
Inc.
• Healthcare
Systems
Group
• Info. Systems
Management
• Nelson
Data
Resources
• Pagnotta &
Associates
• Systems
Manage-
ment Inc.
• William F.
Andrews

10. “Creative” Boutique Names
• Some of the names of these boutique firms were fascinating
themselves! Would you buy HIT consulting from a firm named:
• I did not make these up! They all appear in the 1985 study from
SysteMetrics, entitled the “Hospital Information Systems Profile”
• Advanced
Concepts
(no obsolete
ones)
• Assertive
Systems (all
male?)
• Dakota
Systems
(north or
south?)
• Benchmark
Systems
(know where
you start)
• Beta
Consultants
(2nd
best?)
• Cedar
Consultants
(a splinter
group?)
• Cajun
Computers
(didn’t sell
well in Minn!)
• Christech
Consultants(C
HI/CHW
specialists?)
• Comaccounts
(sic! Or is it
“sick”?)
• Computer
Sense (no
nonsense)
• Computers
West (HQ in
NYC?)
• Current
Company(ob
solete?)
• Helm & Co.
(planning?)

11. More “Creative” Names
• I can’t believe some of these names! If you’re still out there and
have grown to a $1B giant, please don’t sic your attorneys on me!
• Internally
Developed(R
FP
specialists)
• Loeb &
Troper
(wasn’t that
a murder
case?)
• Lynn
Outlaw(Even
I won’t touch
that one!)
• Moore Data
Services(wha
t they want
you to buy…)
• Northern
Data
Systems(Caju
n’s Minn.
Office?)
• Computer
Network
Group (LANs
& WANs?)
• Oklahoma
Innovative
Systems(comp
etes with
Northern &
Cajun…)
• Practical
Health
Systems
(they’d never
recommend
Epic…)
• Scientific
Analysis
Corporation
(number
crunchers?)
• Select
Systems
(let’s!)
• Soft-
Trend(hardwa
re?)
• Special
Projects

12. “Individual” Consultants
• So who were the 100+ individuals who hung out a consulting
shingle, either trying to make it big or “in between” salaried jobs?
• Below is a very partial list culled from that 1985 market survey:
• Recognize any of these names? Neither do I! But then, they
probably have no idea who the heck I was (or am!) either…
 Baldwin
 Bridgeman
 Charles
May
 Dana Cole
 Dave
Thurston
 Dennis
Lincoln
 Don Culver
 Eddie
Parrot
 Hal
Fonturelle
 William
Hamlin
 Janice
Schlepp
 Joel
Goldman
 John
Hodges
 John
Moffat
 Kermit
Blake
 Klye Smith
 Joe Nadeau
 Larry Taplin
 Lynn Outlaw
 Marcia Bennet
 Ray Cragle
 Robert
O’Desky
 Sofferman
 Tom Watson

13. So What’s Next?
• Next week we’ll profile several consulting
firms that started small in the 80’s (they pop
up with a few clients in this 1985 survey),
• But then grew to enormous proportions
in the 90’s, dwarfing many HIS vendors in
terms of FTEs, clients, and annual revenue!
• How did they do it? A one word answer that
actually started way back in HIS-tory with
Compucare and Medicus, who took two
words to describe it in their 1970’s naïveté…
• As usual, anyone with contributions, please
call or write Vince Ciotti, care of the Polk
County Sheriff’s Department, Polk City, FL:
• vciott@hispros.com or 505/466-4958