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Comment by duffpkg | Hacker News Reader

I created a company around an Open Source Electronic Medical Records system I also created, ClearHealth. It took me a couple of years to realize we were losing deals for health systems not because our system was bad (it was great), not because our sales teams were bad (they were great) but because we weren't engaging in kick-backs and outright bribery. This has become such a normalized part of business at institutions that it is extremely hard to be competitive if you don't do it.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/electronic-health-records-ven...

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Did people ask you for bribes, did you say no, did you miss the hints, or did you just not know that you needed to do this?

After losing some deals that just seemed like there was no credible way we could lose, better "product", better price, better team, etc. You start asking hard questions about all the people involved and eventually someome will confidentially explain what happened. Especially people who actually need to work with the worse vendor that just got selected.

If you read through the settlement I linked ("The settlement also resolves allegations that ECW paid kickbacks to certain customers in exchange for promoting its product.") and other documentation regarding that case you can find details of several situations. I am singling out ECW there because that settlement exists. You would have to be pretty naive to think they were the only vendor engaged in that type of behavior and that the recipients of kick backs were only receiving kick backs from them alone.

Thanks for answering, I always wonder how people find out things like this. For me it's like racism, how will you ever know the real motivation? I guess sometimes you will get some discreet feedback.

i'm far away from b2b sales so this is pretty shocking and thanks for sharing, but couldn't "kickbacks to certain customers in exchange for promoting its product" be something like "leave us a testimonial and we'll cut you a deal"? Is it legal to, say, pay for references and testimonials?

If you consult the details you will find the allegations are of direct payments, trips, and other hard assets up to and including duffle bags full of cash.

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