It’s all about aligning “the right information with the right people at the right time,” said HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith in her closing message to attendees of the HIMSS14 Annual Conference & Exhibition.
But rewind back to the opening day of the conference, Feb. 23, at the Physicians’ IT Symposium: The Road to Quality-Enabled Health IT. The symposium hosted luminary speakers on ground-breaking topics that analyzed current health IT challenges with collecting data and quality metrics utilizing the triple aim. New 30-minute case study formats illustrated real-world data exchange across the communities.
The Conversation Doesn’t Stop Although HIMSS14 is over, our physician community is undertaking a number of activities. You can stay abreast of our community activities and national initiatives of importance. To learn more, visit http://www.himss.org/physician |
Nick van Terheyden, MD, in his blog Voice of the Doctor (drvoice.blogspot.com), summarized the closing keynote from Henry J. Feldman, MD, on where we should be with patient engagement and patient-generated data. “I know where I’d like to be receiving my care (and lab results) from. Patients understand more than we think so teach patients how to use data effectively.”
During the Physician Community Breakfast, Michael Hankins, MD, MPH, Disney’s chief physician, reviewed the Disney health IT solution to document encounters with Disney cast members, crew and guests at theme park health clinics and aboard its cruise ships. The selected solution replaced multiple legacy systems, integrates with numerous applications and devices and combines clinical, occupational health and compliance and employee engagement modules on a single, web-based platform.
Results of the 25th Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey were released during the conference. The survey reflects the experiences and opinions of IT professionals in U.S. provider organizations and key findings include the following:
- Providers are IT project champions
- Top IT priorities are CPOE and physician documentation
- Patient portals and other mediums for patients to access information are increasing
- Clinicians play a key role in IT adoption
Fast forward to the Oscars of the HIMSS14 where the HIMSS Physician IT Leadership Award was presented to Keith Salzman, MD, MPH, Col.(R), U.S. Marine Corps. This award recognizes one individual who has demonstrated significant leadership in the area of applying IT to the needs of physicians while serving the society and the industry. Salzman has more than 24 years of success delivering quality care to patients. He established the premiere informatics division in the Military Health System; is currently the CMIO of CACI International Inc. and serves as the volunteer chair of the HIMSS Interoperability & Standards Committee. He is a great physician leader and innovator in informatics.
Carol Steltenkamp, MD, MBA, is CMIO at University of Kentucky HealthCare, Kentucky REC Executive Director, and Vice Chair of HIMSS. Christel Anderson, MA, is Director of Clinical Informatics at HIMSS.