Following a relative lull in the latter half of last year, we now have two new awards to announce. Sometimes the only explanation for outrageous savings claims is that people want to win an award. it doesn't matter what award, just any award. Our job here at DMPC is to make sure that those people don't go away empty-handed.

The first is William M. Mercer. They recently presented savings in asthma and COPD for a large retailer which exceeded the amount which the retailer could possibly have spent on ER and Inpatient in those two categories. It never occurred to them to check that particular tidbit, or for that matter even to see whether admissions and ER visits for those two categories declined at all, which they didn't. They did say that the findings might be "suspect." To the retailer's credit, they have distanced themselves from this particular study, though a sufficient distancing might require relocating to somewhere far away, such as Mars.

The second is a company called Edify.com. They were kind enough to provide a definition of "edify" right on the home page, in case anyone is wondering what the word means and doesn't have access to a dictionary or an eighth-grader. The only people who should be wondering, though, are the "experts" on the staff at Edify itself, because they could use some edification, which naturally we here at DMPC are happy to provide.

1. You cannot save 22% in any program, especially — and I don't mean any disrespect by this — yours
2. Perhaps you double-counted savings, as in the sentence "As a result, people had fewer hospital admissions and hospital stays." Really? You managed to reduce both at the same time?
3. Speaking of sentences and question marks, the sentence "What We Do" is declarative, not interrogatory. A simple period will suffice at the end of it to complete the thought. Otherwise your sentence looks like this one?
4. In general, you need to learn how to master the use of semi-colons and for that matter the English language as a whole.

The final sentence on their home page is: "Talk to EDIFY about what we can do with you." I'm pretty sure I know what they would do with me now, assuming they could get past building security.

Apparently we aren't the only people who think these guys are a few fries short of a Happy Meal. The rest of their customer base does too, and the company no longer exists.

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