The Legend of Bob the DERF

Cross-posting from informatimusicology.blogspot.com

 

From the ACMI Archives:

The Legend of Bob the DERF

Click here to listen to the song

The College has received several solicitations from potential members - requesting reviews of health IT related lyrics or recordings.  We thought it would be instructive to bring out some of the original works that led to the establishment of the College.  There is no better place to start than at the very beginning...

The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), is an ANSI-accredited standards development organization focused on pharmacy-related electronic information transactions headquarted in Scottsdale, Arizona.  In 2005, Dr. Ross Martin offered to compose a song for NCPDP for their Annual Conference.  His offer was accepted and a sponsor stepped forward to support the recording and reproduction costs for a CD.  Special thanks go to Lee Ann Stember, NCPDP's President, for sponsoring the song.  The lovely and talented Eric Schwartz (WARNING: he is brilliant, but uses his powers for evil, so his site is not for those of sensitive dispositions) produced and recorded the song, adding many of the vocals and most of the instrumentation.  Dr. Martin performed the song twice at the conference and several hundred copies of the CD, now considered a collector's item among devoted informatimusicologists, were distributed.  

The song, "The Legend of Bob the DERF," tells the tale of how we moved from our darker days of winner-takes-all standards setting to our current consensus process.  Those unfamiliar with NCPDP and its methods may be curious of the meaning of the term DERF.  It stands for "Data Element Request Form" and is the main document used in the NCPDP standards development process to establish or modify a standard.  Many who heard the song and are familiar with the history of NCPDP opined that the two characters depicted in the song - Bob the DERF and Margaret, aka, The Wacker - bore striking similarities to two long-time members of NCPDP, Bob Beckley of Surescripts and Margaret Weiker of EDS, both of whom are known for their strong leadership and equally strong opinions, which have occasionally put them at odds with one another, creating some of the more tense moments experienced at workgroup meetings.  Their southern accents and Margaret's diminutive stature (she is rumored to be around 4' 5" tall, though no one has had the kahunas to actually measure her or ask) provided reinforcement for some of these opinions.  In fact, the characters portrayed in the song are not based on any known individuals, living or dead.  Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' fer a fight!

The Lyrics:

Way back a hunert years ago
In a desert land devoid of snow
’Fore Scottsdale started dottin’ any maps
Snake Oil Salesmen roamed the West
Pitchin’ potions from their treasure chests
And shaftin’ any sucker wearin’ chaps

There was one man who had a dream
’Bout raisin’ druggists’ self esteem
By protectin’ the apothecary’s turf
He saw that standards were the key
For improvin’ drugstore quality
That man was known by all as Bob the DERF

Now any tale worth bein’ told
Includes a woman, guns or gold
Our hero’s rival ponied up all three
Margaret was her given name
But winnin’ gunfights brought her fame
So the name “The Whacker” fit her to a tee
And ev’ry time The Whacker flashed her gold incisor in a grin
The undertaker knew he’d soon be callin’ next of kin

CHORUS:
Hoo-ee ’n’ Yippee-ki-ee
Before the NCPDP
Consensus was a notion seldom found
Hoo-ah ’n’ Yippee-ki-yaw
The fastest shot laid down the law
The other laid down six feet underground

Now The Whacker had her standards too
And had in mind just what to do
To make sure things got done by her own rule
She called on Bob the DERF and said,
“You lily-livered pudd’nhead
It’s my way or the highway, ya’ dang fool!”

She knew her taunts would be enough
To razz him so he’d call her bluff
He slammed his whiskey down as if on cue
“Well we’ll just see ’bout who’ll be number one
High noon, tomorrow – bring your gun
But I’d skip town tonight if I was you!”

The bookies laid odds eight-to-five
The Whacker’d make it through alive
Her dead-eye aim was known throughout the land
It’s true that Margaret had her chance
But once they started in to dance
The DERF felt sure he’d be the last to stand
And so they set the stage to see whose standards would prevail
One slinger’d see sweet victory – and one the gates of Hell

REPEAT CHORUS

The clock chimed twelve – the wind was still
Too scared to see red rivers spill
And learn who’d bite the dust who’d survive
The two stepped out into the street
To face their fate at fifty feet
Then in a flash their pistols came alive

Bob the DERF’s resolve came through
His steady hand shot straight and true
A normal foe no doubt would have been dead
But one fact he failed to calculate –
The Whacker stood at four-foot-eight
And so her Stetson flew clean off her head

The DERF’s luck went from bad to worse
Didn’t even have a chance to curse
As The Whacker’s dental work gleamed through her smile
Her single shot was on the mark
It pierced his heart – the sky went dark
Right there he fell into a bloody pile
And as he died, The Whacker cried, “Oh, help me, Lord above!
All in the name of standards, I’ve just killed my one true love!”

REPEAT CHORUS

She lay her pistol down and swore upon her golden tooth
Consensus now will be pursued in healthcare’s quest for truth
“No longer will our blood be shed for standards to be set
We’ll gather round and talk until a compromise is met”

So now you know just how we formed the NCPDP
And how this modern standards settin’ process came to be
And after endless hours of meetings why my eyes will glaze
I’m dreamin’ ’bout how things got done back in those glory days when…

REPEAT CHORUS

Words by Ross Martin
Music by Eric Schwartz and Ross Martin
Lead vocals: Ross Martin
Background vocals: Ross Martin and Eric Schwartz
All instruments and sequencing: Eric Schwartz
Produced and engineered by Eric Schwartz, Claritone Music
Special thanks to Kevin So

Announcement of New Position at BearingPoint

Announcement of New Position at BearingPoint

BearingPoint sent out a press release today announcing my new role as Director of Health Information Convergence within the Healthcare and Life Sciences Segment of the organization. I thought that title would be pretty decriptive of what I will be doing in this new phase of my career. But, perhaps more importantly, the title maximizes my opportunity for involvement while minimizing my accountability for anything approaching tangible results. If I'm successful (not that there's really any way to measure success), I might have a shot at becoming BearingPoint's Chief Paradigm Officer...

On a less silly note, I'm very excited about the new job and have already found opportunities to make myself useful. Below is a brief description of what I see my role becoming over time, which is followed by the press release.

What I’m Doing at Bearingpoint

I worked for Pfizer for six years beginning in 2001. My last four years there focused heavily on Health Information Technology (HIT) standards and policies and the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and Electronic Prescribing (eRx), Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Personal Health Records (PHRs), and the emerging Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). About a year ago, my commercially focused informatics group merged with one from Research & Development, giving us a much-needed opportunity to build a more consistent approach to HIT across the organization. And it gave me the chance to look at ways that HIT policies and standards affect the R&D side of the organization.

The recent changes at Pfizer (continual announcements of reorganization, adapting to scale, and “transformation”) made it increasingly difficult to focus on external environmental activities that, while truly transformational, were really in support of the long-term redesign entire pharmaceutical industry, not just Pfizer’s. While Pfizer was very supportive of the work, in the context of the short-term focus of the organization, it was difficult to justify some of the larger initiatives that wouldn’t return any direct value to Pfizer for several years. I was being courted by several consulting firms that were familiar with my work and history and made the decision to pursue one of these opportunities with BearingPoint.

Like many of its competitors, BearingPoint, is involved in many different industry sectors. In healthcare, we have deep relationships with many Life Sciences companies (including Pfizer) and with hospital systems, Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) and others as systems integrators and strategy consultants. We implement large-scale systems like Cerner, McKesson, Epic, etc. We also do a lot of work for HHS and serve as the Project Management Office for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC or ONCHIT). From this vantage point, BearingPoint has asked me to find ways to make use of all these points of involvement and create synergies between them.

Matching patients to clinical trials through Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs) is but one example of this kind of opportunity. My ideal scenario would be to build a coalition of entities – including various RHIOs, IDNs and a core group of Life Sciences companies – to collaborate on common methods for health information exchange related to clinical research. In this way, we can help defray some of the long-term costs related to enabling these capabilities while tying them to real-world implementations.

One more specific example is the work I’ve been doing over the last few years on HL7’s Guideline Expression Language, GELLO. I’ve been working with a number of collaborators to develop open source authoring tools for creating standardized clinical expressions GELLO that can be used for many purposes in clinical care – including matching patients to clinical trials. Materials on this work are available at http://www.gello.org/. There is a video in particular that goes over its use in prior authorization that may be of interest.

The Press Release

Contact
Jodi Cohen
Director, Global Communications
201.705.8832
jodi.cohen@bearingpoint.com

For immediate release

BearingPoint Names Dr. Ross D. Martin
Director of Health Information Convergence

McLean, Va., April 25, 2007 – BearingPoint, Inc. (NYSE: BE), one of the world’s largest management and technology consulting firms, today announced the appointment of Dr. Ross Martin, as director of Health Information Convergence in the Global Healthcare and Life Sciences practice (HLS). He brings more than 15 years of experience in healthcare as an obstetrician, urgent-care physician, health information technology (HIT) journalist, managed care and medical informatics consultant, and for the last six years, medical informatician at Pfizer.

Martin will be responsible for cultivating opportunities in BearingPoint’s HLS segment (hospital, physician, payer, government and life sciences) to accelerate information flow among healthcare stakeholders through HIT. Martin brings key skills to the firm’s strong position in the ePrescribing area of the life sciences industry, and he supplements the firm’s complement of physician consultants across all sectors of BearingPoint’s HLS segment.

Most recently, Martin was the director of Healthcare Informatics at Pfizer Inc. where he initiated and led many of Pfizer’s efforts to influence national standards and policies for electronic prescribing, electronic health records, personal health records, online medical education and the emerging Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).

Martin serves on the Consumer Empowerment Workgroup of the American Health Information Community and on the boards of the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs and the HIT Standards Panel. He has conducted in-depth field research in eRx and advocated for and led a cross-industry volunteer team in the creation of a standards-mapping guidance document enabling the exchange of electronic prescriptions between inpatient and outpatient settings in the U.S.

“We are thrilled to announce the appointment of such an accomplished medical professional,” said Phil Garland, senior vice president and head of the Global Life Sciences practice. “Martin’s experience in health informatics, policy, business and clinical medicine combined with BearingPoint’s deep industry expertise will allow us to help build a more consistent approach toward HIT across pharmaceutical organizations.”

“I am excited to join BearingPoint’s Global Healthcare and Life Sciences practice and look forward to contributing even more to the transformation of both the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries through the convergence of clinical research and clinical care,” said Martin. “By working with BearingPoint colleagues embedded throughout healthcare and other industries, I hope to help leverage our unique position as a global company capable of both developing and implementing the array of strategies necessary to build synergies among life sciences companies, healthcare providers, payers and other stakeholders.”

Martin earned a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from Wright State University, received his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati and earned a masters degree of health services administration from Xavier University. He also held a National Institute of Health fellowship in medical informatics at the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology.

About BearingPoint, Inc.

BearingPoint, Inc. (NYSE: BE) is one of the world's largest providers of management and technology consulting services to Global 2000 companies and government organizations in 60 countries worldwide. Based in McLean, Va., the firm has over 17,000 employees and major practice areas focusing on the Public Services, Financial Services and Commercial Services markets. For nearly 100 years, BearingPoint professionals have built a reputation for knowing what it takes to help clients achieve their goals, and working closely with them to get the job done. For more information, visit the Company's website at www.BearingPoint.com.

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Some of the statements in this press release constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections. Words such as “will,” “expects,” “believes” and similar expressions are used to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are only predictions and as such are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions as to future events or our future financial performance that may not prove to be accurate. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecast in these forward-looking statements. As a result, these statements speak only as of the date they were made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.