I worked in a hospital, and saw similar things, but I think the moral of the story is that huge organizations operate internally more like a feudal oligarchy. They crystallize, regardless of the external market.
This one certainly was. Another story of my friends was sitting in on a meeting, where one of the old-school specialists of nearly 30 years experience made a snide remark about 'newcomers not understanding how things are done'. The target of the remark responded 'I've been here 17 years...'.
The point remains the same, though - letting physicians choose whatever they want is not a magic bullet given by 'the free market', and can make things worse in practise. And it's not like 'the free market' has shown us that comms protocols are followed with any particular veracity in the software world, for things that have no regulation on them. Do we have an open video codec yet that runs on all browsers, for example?
