WPHIMSS September Newsletter

WPHIMSS CHAPTER NEWS
Vision 2025 Event - A Recap
 
                      

 

On September 8, 2016, over 50 Western PA HIMSS Health IT leaders gathered for the annual "Vision 2025" event.
 
Scott Zasadil opened the event, discussing current healthcare analytics goals, readmission models, the challenges with healthcare analytics, how to prepare an organization for change, and the fact that analytics is not an IT function. He ended his presentation with the question to audience participants: "Where do you see yourself in 2025?"
 
Jeff Fallon and Paul Allemeier then captured the audience's attention with a Patient Engagement presentation. Simply stated, they said that engaging patients is the right thing to do and successfully engaging patients is like the blockbuster of the century. They reviewed patient activation measures and levels, patient engagement technologies, and value based purchasing. Their final call to action was that people need to understand research on patient activation and implications under the value based patient and that championing patient engagement should be a strategic priority to lead an organization to success.
 
April Kane and Steven Handler then took over for the RAVEN panel, discussing their telemedicine results, telemedicine surveys and enhanced care staff. The also looked ahead at Phase II of the Raven project, which will include payment reform only, looking at quality measure outcomes and facility savings, new billable code categories, and practitioner payments for care coordination and caregiver engagement.
 
The final panel included three executives looking at their visions for the future of health it. Marianne McConnell said the usability and optimization will have the largest impact, and questioned whether IT is impacting the cost of care. Rich Ong ended the discussion, saying that the future of health IT has to be a team effort with big data and interoperability.
 
The evening ended with a terrific networking event for the speakers and attendees. Thank you to everyone who supported the annual event! 
 
Welcome to our new 2016-2017 Board members!
Officers:
President: Jenny Sabol
President-Elect: Feresh Palmer
Immediate Past President: Otto Salguero
Treasurer: Scott Bachik 
Secretary: Shireen Thomas
 
Directors-At-Large:
Kristin Biedinger
Shirley Brandon
Ryan Brown
Matt Carbonara
James Courtney
Diana Cugliari
Vince D’Itri
John Ritter
Stephanie Wallace
 
Committee Chairs:
Advocacy: John Ritter
Business Development: Matt Carbonara
Communications: Diana Cugliari/Stephanie Wallace/Vincent D'Itri
Programs & Education: Kristin Biedinger
 
Member News Articles
Check out the latest blog post from WPHIMSS' own Kristin Biedinger: OCR to Increase Investigations of Smaller PHI Breaches.  
 
Congratulations!
Congratulations to WPHIMSS member Bonnie Anton for passing her CPHIMS exam!
LOCAL AND NATIONAL UPCOMING EVENTS
REMINDER: PA Healthcare Summit Friday, October 14
Don't forget to register for the annual PA Healthcare Summit coming up next month.  For more information and to register, please head to the event page on our website.
 
IHE North American Connectathon
IHE Connectathons are a cross-vendor, live, supervised and structured testing event where industry leaders test implementations of IHE Profiles to advance health IT interoperability. All tests are evaluated on interoperability and conformance to IHE Profiles found in IHE’s Technical Frameworks. The test floor is overseen by IHE’s technical project managers providing a safe, neutral test environment and an unparalleled opportunity for industry collaboration and problem resolution. IHE Connectathons take place annually in various countries across the world to advance health IT and patient safety.   For more information and to register for this great event, click here!
 
National Health IT Week - September 26-30
It's almost here!  Next week is recognized as National Health IT Week 2016.  For events and ways to become involved, please head over to the National Health IT webpage.   
 
SAVE THE DATE! Please keep the below dates on your calendar for future WPHIMSS events.  Follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn, and keep an eye out for email updates.  As always, you can find additional information on the events page on our website as well!
Wednesday, November 9, 2016: TBD
Wednesday, January 25, 2017: TBD
February 19-23: HIMSS17 National Conference in Orlando
Wednesday, April 5, 2017: TBD
May 2017: PA Advocacy Day
Q4 2017: PA Healthcare Summit
 

In memoriam: Elizabeth Wertz Evans, PhD, RN 

1956-2016

On August 17, 2016, Western PA HIMSS lost one of its beloved members, Elizabeth Wertz Evans, to a courageous battle with metastatic breast cancer (obituary). Liz was a very active board member in our chapter since 2008, most recently serving as President during the 2013-2014 term. In her career, Liz most recently served as the Executive Director, Professional Practice and Programs, for the Oncology Nursing Society. Being a nurse by background, Liz was an essential advocate to get our  nurses in the area more involved in our chapter’s initiatives and events.
 
Liz was also very involved in HIMSS National, with the distinguished designation as a Fellow Member, part of the Nursing Informatics Committee, NQF Task Force, and a leader for both the local and national Health IT Advocacy Day.
 
Liz became a terrific mentor, friend, and colleague to so many of our board and chapter members. Thank you, Liz, for your dedication and support to our chapter and industry over the years. You will be forever missed in our community.
 
 
 
WPHIMSS accomplishments include:
•Immediate Past President, 2014 to 2015
• President, 2013 to 2014
• At-Large Board Member, 2010 to 2013
• Chairperson, Professional Development Committee, 2012 to 2013
• Chairperson, Ambulatory Committee and Sponsorship Committee, 2011 to 2012
• Chairperson, Sponsorship Committee for Health Information Technology Summit and Annual Pennsylvania HIT Advocacy Day in Harrisburg, PA, 2009 to 2010
• Member, Program Committee, 2009 to 2010
• Chairperson, Business Development Committee, 2009 to 2010
• Participant, First PA HIT Advocacy Day in Harrisburg on 5/12/08