In This Issue:
 President's Message
GAHIMSS Member Earns Fellow Status
CHIME Update
ONC HIT Policy Committee Update
Institute for Safe Medication Practices Update
ONC Update
GA HIMSS Sponsors
Weekend Immersed in Nursing Informatics
Healthcare IT Transformation Executive Roundtable
CPOE: Getting Order Management Right
Share Your News!
Message from Our GAHIMSS President
Spring is such a wonderful time here in Georgia and I hope you have had a chance to enjoy it. Since our last newsletter the US healthcare landscape has certainly changed with the passage of the healthcare reform legislation. Regardless of whether or not you think this change is for the better or for the worse, one thing is clear – health IT is certainly in the spotlight and there has never been a more exciting or challenging time to be part of this dynamic industry.
Our chapter has been very active this past year and has put on some great events starting with our successful Trade faire last fall. This was the 4th time we have held this event and it gets better each time. We plan to repeat this event again next fall on September 30th. Please mark your calendars and save the date. Stay tuned to our chapter website for more details as they develop.
Together with the Atlanta Chamber of commerce, we hosted an event during the national HIMSS conference here in Atlanta to celebrate Georgia as the Health IT capital of the country. Health IT is an important economic driver in this state with an amazing number of HIT companies calling Atlanta home. Board member Denise Hines did a great job working with the Chamber to coordinate this event.
Our “weekend immersion in nursing informatics” or WINI program, held April 16-18 at the University of West Georgia was a success. I want to express my thanks to board members Shirley Woodhead and Stephanie Kingsley for their hard work putting this program together.
We held our first ever Statewide Town Hall “Translating HITECH into High Quality” on Thursday April 29. This was a highly innovative program with live audiences and panelist in both Atlanta and Savannah that was simultaneously broadcast with live video connecting the two locations. We felt this would be an outstanding way to reach out across the entire state and serve our many members who don’t live and work in the Atlanta area. This program took a tremendous amount of effort and Rob Aaron, our Chapter’s President Elect worked very hard putting it all together. I also want to thank Emory’s Dee Cantrell and Memorial University Medical Center’s Patty Lavely for working with us to host this exciting event at their facilities.
Finally on May 22 we will hold our first ever GA HIMSS golf. I hope you can join us and enjoy a day of golf on the recently renovated Bobby Jones Golf Course in Atlanta, as well as networking with fellow GAHIMSS members, guests and sponsors at the breakfast and awards banquet. The awards banquet will also feature an industry healthcare leader as our guest speaker. Christopher Kunney, a chapter volunteer has led our efforts putting this event together. Thanks Christopher!
The hardest, and most time consuming, position in our Chapter is our Program Chair. This year Claire Shults has done a fantastic job in this role. Claire was helped immensely by our assistant program Chair Cynthia Windsor. They both put in countless hours making sure all our events came together smoothly and none of these great events would have happened without them. Claire and Cynthia deserve a tremendous amount of thanks from all of us for a job well done!
I also want to thank our annual Chapter sponsors – Centrinet, Lawson and Relay Health. Their chapter support, along with the sponsors of our different events allow us to put on programs and events that we would not otherwise be able to afford without charging our members much higher fees to participate.
This will most probably be my last message to you as the President of your GA HIMSS Chapter. Thank you all for the opportunity to serve and work with so many great folks during this historic time in our industry. I want to personally thank my good friend David Cowan was urging me to get involved with our chapter many years ago. It has been a rich and rewarding experience.
Rob Aaron will be taking over as President beginning July 1 and I am confident he will do a great job. He has a vision and passion for GA HIMSS that will serve all of us well. I look forward to continuing to serve the Chapter in the coming year and helping Rob achieve his goals and vision for our Chapter.
Sincerely,
Don Kinser
President, GA HIMSS
GAHIMSS Member Earns Fellow Status
Congratulations to Sheldon Tyndall! The Board of Directors of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has approved Sheldon for Fellow Member status. He has earned, and is entitled to add the designation FHIMSS (Fellow of HIMSS) following your name. This designation indicates Sheldon’s professional status and advancement within our professional society. This honor is bestowed in recognition of Sheldon’s service, professional participation, job experience, publications, and presentations.
Sheldon has over 30 years of experience in healthcare IT spanning hospitals, nursing homes, consulting and software vendors with most of those years as the senior IT leader in 5 major health systems in the southeast. During that time experiences have included unique opportunities in a Children’s Hospital, a merger between two competing hospitals, VHA & Premier relationships, and regional and national vendor related user group officer positions and filled the senior IT executive positions in 3 IT Outsourcing accounts.
Professional activities have included several years in CHIME and a HIMSS member since 1988 serving the GA Chapter in recent years as Program Chair and President. Additional career activities include HIMSS active participation in various task force and national committees, college level teaching in the classroom and online bachelor and graduate classes in Information Business Management. Sheldon has served on the National HIMSS HIE committee completing a 2 year in 2010.
Currently, Sheldon owns and operates Hunter Stokes & Associates since October 2008, a boutique consulting company specializing in healthcare IT management improving healthcare delivery through technology and process improvement.
Georgia HIMSS is proud to have 16 members who have earned the title of HIMSS Fellow. We congratulate all of these members for their service and support of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
CHIME Invites Participation in StateNet
Recently, CHIME as created a mechanism for state-wide communication on HIE work for each state of the Union. Regardless if you are a member of CHIME or not, we would like to extend an invitation for the lead IT person of each healthcare organization in the state of Georgia to join the Georgia StateNet through CHIME.
In order to become a member and be added to our email list-serve, please complete the form online here: www.ciostatenet.org. Upon registration, you will automatically be added to your state's list-serve and you may log-in to the StateNet website using your main CHIME user-name and password. After you register, you may begin using the list-serve immediately. If you are not a CHIME member, you can select that option and complete the registration form to be added to the StateNet listserv as a nonmember.
To send emails to our state's list-serve, simply send your email to this address: advocacystatenet_ga@lists.cio-chime.org.
With the support of CHIME, we have developed a toolkit to gather basic information about HIT activity in our state, such as identifying the HIT planning authority, strategic and operational plans, state-level directories, and HIE business and operational processes.
In Georgia, we are fortunate to have a great deal of HIT activities. We, in the state of Georgia, are recipients of the State-Wide HIE Cooperative Agreement and Regional Extension Center grants awarded by CMS. There are several local HIE projects underway to include urban and rural communities.
Get involved and learn more about this exciting work. We hope that you will join the listserv and contribute to the information sharing.
ONC HIT Policy Committee Update
Government Health IT
The HIT Policy Committee met on April 21st. Agenda items included recommendations from its adoption and certification work group that call for the creation of a national database to track errors and safety issues associated with electronic health records. For more information, see the report in Government Health IT. In addition, Tony Trenkle, CMS reported on their progress on the MU comments and final rule. CMS again said that they are still “hoping” to release a final rule late Spring – so no hard commitment on date.
Here are some of the highpoints of their discussion:
• CMS has finished cataloging all comments, and all comments and responses are being reviewed by CMS and OMBC
• Most comments are directed towards several key issues:
- Flexibility on implementations (all or nothing incentive
payments)
- Percentages
• Regarding required quality measures, there is significant stakeholder pushback on the start date. Stakeholders have requested that testing be the standard in 2011, and reporting on quality measures would take place in 2012. Also, many stakeholders are concerned that the quality measures are not mature.
• A number of stakeholders have commented that their organizations should not be included in requirements where information cannot be captured through the EHR.
• A number of stakeholders have indicated that they hope ONC will give very little flexibility to states (Medicaid) to add additional requirements for Meaningful Use. Numerous additional requirements could pose additional barriers to adoption according to respondents.
• Numerous stakeholders have recommended extending the length of each Meaningful Use stage.
• Other issues of concern: Eligible providers at Multi-Campus Health Systems and the exclusion of requiring administrative functions in Meaningful Use (example: insurance eligibility, claims processing)
• CMS staff members are meeting with members of Congress on Friday, April 23 to discuss several of the same key issues found in the public comment responses
Institute for Safe Medication Practices Update
Creates human factors guidelines for CPOE systems
Institute for Safe Medication Practices ISMP CPOE Guidelines
The Institute for Safe Practices (ISMP) is concerned about what happens when practitioners who may provide care at different hospitals are ordering medications on various paper or electronic systems that may have vastly different user interfaces. To reduce the chance of error, the ISMP recommends universal adoption of human factors and usability guidelines for both paper and electronic order entry systems.
The ISMP has created “Guidelines for Standard Order Sets.” Presented in a checklist format, the standards cover human factors usability basics such as formats (that is, the arrangement of layouts, standard presentation, fonts and typefaces, use of symbols, abbreviations, dose designation, prompts, and so forth); content; approval and maintenance; and specific criteria.
Office of the National Coordinator Update
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology outlines EHR certification approach
Office of the National Coordinator
David Blumenthal announced that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) outlining the anticipated approach for establishing a certification program to test and certify electronic health records (EHRs). The HITECH Act mandated the development of a vendor certification program. It stipulates that healthcare providers seeking to receive subsidies for investments they make in health information technology must use a certified electronic health-record system. That system provides purchasers and users of EHR technology assurances that the technology and products have the necessary technology capability, functionality, and security to help meet meaningful use criteria.
The proposed rule incorporates two phases of development for the certification program to ensure that eligible professionals and eligible hospitals are able to adopt and implement Certified EHR Technology in time to qualify for meaningful use incentive payments. The initial proposal establishes a temporary certification process under which the National Coordinator would authorize organizations to assume many of the responsibilities that will eventually be fulfilled under the permanent certification program. It is proposed that eventually a permanent certification program will be created in which most of the responsibility for testing and certification will be transitioned to private sector organizations. There will be a 30-day public comment period on the temporary certification program, with a final rule expected by late spring. The first vendor EHRs could be certified under the temporary program by summer.
Certification programs information on the ONC web site.
Weekend Immersed in Nursing Informatics
Stefanie Kingsley, RN, MSN
The Georgia chapter of HIMSS held a Weekend Immersion in Nursing Informatics (WINI) the third weekend in April, 2010. Thank you to University of West Georgia School of Nursing for hosting the event. Thanks to their generosity, we were able to keep costs down while offering quality content in a lovely facility.
The purpose of the WINI is to prepare nurses for certification in Nursing Informatics through the American Nurses Credentialing Center. The weekend started at noon on Friday with sessions led by Carol J. Bickford, PhD, RN, BC & Kathleen Smith, MScEd, RN, BC, FHIMSS, co -founders of Informatics Consulting and Continuing Education, L.L.C. There were 34 nurses in attendance from all over the U.S. - Miami, Chicago, Pittsburg, Washington D.C., Tennessee, North Carolina- as well as from Georgia. The first day ended with a meet and greet with delicious appetizers and wine. Afterwards, the fun continued at Miller’s restaurant in Carrollton.
Saturday started early with continued education in nursing informatics including break out sessions that allowed the attendees to use their knowledge and critical thinking skills. After a rather exhausting day, the attendees gathered again for an evening at a local Hawaiian restaurant. As an added bonus- it was Prom Night in Carrollton! We were treated to a show of lovely young folks dressed in their finest.
The seminar wrapped up around noon on Sunday. The attendees were tired and overwhelmed with information but prepared with a study plan and goal to complete the certification exam in the next few months.
Healthcare IT Transformation Executive Roundtable
You are Invited!
Reserve your seat Reserve your seat for a "Healthcare IT Transformation Executive Roundtable: Establishing a Competitive Advantage with Healthcare Stimulus and Reform," coming to Atlanta, June 10, 2010 at the Ritz Carlton Buckhead from 8:30 - 11:30 a.m.
This complimentary Executive Breakfast Roundtable, in association with IDC Healthcare Insights, will focus on HIE stimulus funding, meaningful-use requirements and what you can do to ensure your company's eligibility.
Featured presenters include Scott Lundstrom, Vice President, Research, IDC Health Industry Insights, Mark Blatt, MD, Director, Healthcare Industry Solutions, Digital Health Group, Intel and Justin Barnes, Chairman, EHR Association, HIMSS and, Vice President of Marketing, Corporate Development and Government Affairs, Greenway Medical Technology. They will address key questions such as:
• What is the current state of medical records?
• What is care coordination, and what IT platform is needed to support it?
• How will you scale your human capital to care for more patients without sacrificing quality or access?
• What will an IT department that has successfully achieved meaningful use look like?
• What is needed to meet meaningful use requirements?
View the Complete Agenda
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and healthcare reform are changing everything you thought you knew about IT requirements for HIE-compliant healthcare. Here's your chance to get up to speed on these changes quickly, while learning how to invest in HIE technology to ensure business and patient care success.
Reserve your place now for the Atlanta Healthcare IT Transformation Executive Roundtable: Establishing a Competitive Advantage with Healthcare Stimulus and Reform on June 10, 2010 at the Ritz Carlton Buckhead.
* Registration is complimentary to qualified executives. IDC reserves the right to determine the total audience profile and your registration is subject to approval. Upon receipt of your registration, you will be notified of the status of your attendance within 3 business days.
CPOE: Getting Order Management Right
Dan Stewart
Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) is clearly a core element of Meaningful Use required for hospitals to qualify for the financial incentives offered under the HITECH stimulus bill. Stalled or suspended CPOE rollouts often result from the combination of slow adoption by physicians and problems with order management.
Getting CPOE right the first time has always been important because the loss of momentum and credibility makes the next attempt more difficult (and probably also more expensive). The new deadline for qualifying for the financial incentives under HITECH adds to the urgency today. A smooth transition for order management is a critical element of getting CPOE right the first time.
The good news is that there is now experience to build upon that was not available to the CPOE pioneers. This paper reviews the experience and lessons learned of our clinician consultants who have worked with hospitals of all sizes in many aspects of implementing or optimizing CPOE.
For the complete whitepaper, download "CPOE: Getting Order Management Right".
Share Your News!
Your Georgia HIMSS chapter would like to share your news across the state. Send us your upcoming events, news and activities for publication in our eNewsletter. Please include your contact information so we can verify your news and provide you with a proof of your article before publishing.
Send your news to GA HIMSS News.
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President
Donald E. Kinser, PE, MBA
Chairman and CEO
EDI, Ltd.
President Elect
Robert Aaron, MA
Healthcare Industry Manager
Microsoft Corporation
Past President
R. Sheldon Tyndall
Founder
Hunter Stokes & Associates
Treasurer
Mr. Steve Toland
President
Quality Computer Systems
Program Chair
Claire Shults
Business Development Manager
Intel Digital Health
Advocacy Chair
David G. Lenhart
Director Health Solutions – State and Local Government
Vangent
GAHIMSS
www.gahimss.org
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