2nd Shared System Giant: McAutoMcAuto• The second leader of the shared system revolution of

the 70s was “McAuto” - McDonnell-Douglas Automation Company, IT arm of the aircraft giant in St. Louis.

• Several interesting parallels with prior HIS pioneers:– The aerospace connection, like Lockheed’s MIS system– Another Medicare-inspired R&D, shades of today’s ARRA…

• Surprisingly, it all began with HBO’s Walt Huff:– A name we’ll hear repeatedly in the next HIS epoch

on minicomputers, Walt was the CFO at the Order of St. Francis in Peoria, IL, when Medicare arrived.

– He received a grant to fund R&D of a shared system he called Hospital Financial Control (HFC) to run on a mainframe shared by OSF’s member hospitals.

What’s this got to do with McAuto?• You might ask… Well, a consultant from

McAuto named Chuck Barlow (pictured right) was asked to look at HFC as a potential acquisition for this nearby St. Louis giant.

• Chuck wrote such a rosy assessment of HFC that McAuto said: OK, you run it – and he did!

• Chuck worked at Mac’s General Services Division (GSD)Which ran a huge Data Center off I-270, offering systems like: CAD/CAM – computer-assisted design & manufacturing, daring stuff back then…GCPS = Group Claims Processing System for the Blues & commercial insurances

Health Services Division (HSD)• Chuck wisely set up a totally separate division called HSD

– Knowing full well that the government environment of GSD would stifle the entrepreneurial culture needed in a start-up.

– Circa 1070, within a year of SMS’ birth, HSD moved HFC processing to their data center in St. Louis, and started selling it.

– Early sales heroes like Dick Schopp, Joe Kessel, & Charlie Keane made scores of sales around the country.

– HFC’s on-line edits (unlike SHAS’ batch TCEs) were a hot ticket!

– A major coup was HAI (Hospital Affiliates Inc) in Nashville, that installed HFC in hundreds of their owned sites around the US (like SMS did with American Medicorps).

McAuto Breakthroughs in the 70s

• Hospital Patient Care (HPC):– Piloted at nearby Missouri

Baptist Hospital in the late 70s– With a full array of clinical apps:

• Order Entry & Results Reporting• Nursing Documentation• Ancillary Dept. Modules

– It was one of the first EMRs (we called it a “chart on a screen” back then), running on a shared basis from HSD’s data center!

– Needless to say, slow TP lines kept its sales local, but the R&D experience was priceless…

– And it led to an inhouse version called PCS (Patient Care System)

• Medical Records II (MRII):- Chuck Miller led this abstracting & statistical reporting system automating hundreds of hospitals’ HIM nationwide.

• Debacle: “IncoTerm” terminals- Almost eliminated keypunch cards (& HSD!)… damn things just didn’t work!

HSD led the way in many areas in HIS systems back then:

McAuto SuperstarsOther Early Mac Products:• Patient Care System (PCS):

– Basically HPC run inhouse on Tandem mainframe systems

– Its “Non-Stop” dual CPUs & disk drives perfectly suited an HIS!

– With a full ancillary dept. suite: Lab, Pharmacy and Radiology.

• Mini-based Hospital System– After Mac bought a UK firm called

Microdata that built pioneering minis running the PICK OS,

– HSD bought Skip Shippee’s “MSA” mini-based HIS from NC that ran on Microdata minicomputers.

– But much more of mini-madness later in our next HIS epoch…

As at MIS & SMS, it took dozens of hard-working mavens like:

– Bill Corum• Brilliant, hard-working yet one of the

nicest guys behind the scenes, who ran HSD’s data center & telecom, and led HSD after Chuck Barlow’s illness…

• Art Randall• Smart, fun, superb sales director who

could sell screen doors on submarines!

– Melinda Costin• Amazing clinician/techie, renowned for

her passionate HPC/PCS demos that sold systems on flipcharts & overheads!

Customer Service EthicMcAuto had a defining characteristic I noticed after my 10 years at SMS: sales

was surprisingly subservient to service. Two examples:1. At SMS, sales & marketing (S&M) ruled the executive suite, to whit:

• When I joined in 1969, there were three S&M VPs: Harvey, Ron Dixon and John Marshall, and only one VP on IDs: Mike Mulhall (of Monmouth fame).

• At McAuto 10 years later, Art Randal was only a “Director,” despite having every bit the talent of SMS’ ex-IBMers, well able to duke it out out with them.

2. In SMS’ field offices, the salesman had the corner office, the secretary reported to him, and we IDs (Installation Directors) had desks or cubes (my apologies for the preferential genders, but that’s who was what back then…). In McAuto’s field offices, the Client Service Manager got the corner office and secretary, while sales reps had cubes/desks.

Which approach was better? For hospital customers, McAuto’s was

better, but for stockholders, SMS’. Check out the next slides:

Who Won the “Shared” Battle?

McAuto– Superior technology:

• HPC, HFC on-line edits…

– Superior installs• Client Service veterans…

– Deeper pockets• Giant, high-tech parent…

– Larger client base• 600+ on HFC, 1K on MR II• - Acquired & sunset…

SMS– Superior Sales:

– 3 VPs of S & M in 69!– IBM culture– Big Commi$$ion$

– Superior Marketing– Larger ho$pital$– UNIFILE & ACTIon– IPO, stock…

Invision & MS4 live on!

These two shared system giants duke’d it out for decades; which one won? I worked at both and here’s my precis:

McAuto’s Ironic Fate

• So only fitting that after many twists and turns (to be detailed later), where would McAuto’s HSD eventually end up? You guessed it: with Walt Huff’s HBOC (!), which acquired McAuto’s HSD circa 1995 from Amex/SAI. HBOC ran HFC out of a data center in Charlotte for for a few years before its eventual sunset…

• So it all started with Walt Huff, CFO at OSF, who joined McAuto’s HSD and led the early development of several groundbreaking mini-computer systems too like HDC (Hospital Data Control).