I hear, and personally experience instances where the insurance company does not understand (or at least can explain to us…
DonorsChoose Fundraising Project at the HIMSS15 Conference
Dana Moore, SVP/CIO at Centura Health, offered to give vendors 20 minutes of his full attention during the HIMSS conference in return for a $500 donation to support classroom projects via DonorsChoose. Seven companies signed up, plus another company that wishes to remain anonymous offered to match the money pledged. Dana said it was the best hours he spent at the conference.
The project made $7,000 available to help teachers. The grant requests I funded with the money (some of which I announced previously) are as follows, some of them made possible because of available matching funds from other donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:
- Two Fire HD devices for a middle school reading program in San Diego, CA.
- A projector for a kindergarten class in Erie, PA.
- Professional development books for kindergarten teachers in Charlotte, NC.
- A Chromebook for an elementary school class in Toppenish, WA.
- Algebra calculators for a high school class in Auburn, WA.
- A sand and water table for K-2 children, all with multiple disabilities, in Rosamond, CA.
- Headphones for K-2 classes in Portland, OR.
- A drawing tablet for the iPad for grades 3-5 in Lockhart, TX.
- Three iPad Minis for a sixth grade class in Oklahoma City, OK.
- A television and wall mount for presenting Spanish learning materials for a middle school in Magna, UT.
- Speech therapy learning tools for a speech pathologist for an elementary school in Hawkinsville, GA.
- Two Chromebooks for web-based reading and writing programs for an elementary school in Springfield, OR.
- A science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) bundle for an elementary school in Herminie, PA.
- Studio furniture for a TV show news set for a high school in Atlanta, GA
- An iPad Air 2 and strategy workbooks for an elementary school in Phoenix, AZ.
- A Chromebook for a high school in Gilroy, CA.
- An iPad Air 2 with classroom management tools for a high school in Conway, MO.
- A microphone and recording equipment for creating video documentaries for an elementary school in Pea Ridge, AR.
- Teacher lodging expenses for attending a national educator’s conference for an elementary school in Greenville, SC.
- Math learning centers for an elementary school in Wilder, ID.
- Math learning centers for a kindergarten in Chicago, IL.
- An iPad Mini for teacher professional development for an elementary school in Memphis, TN.
- A STEM bundle for a second grade class in East Islip, NY.
- A Surface Pro 3 for math practice for deaf students in Grades 4-5-6 in Seatac, WA.
- Seven laptops with robotics programming tools for an elementary school in Tukwila, WA.
- A Surface Pro 3 and iPad Mini for math exercises for an elementary school in Seatac, WA.
- Six iPad Minis for math practice for an elementary school in Auburn, WA.
- Math problem solving centers for an elementary school in Fort Walton Beach, FL.
Dana Moore’s Recap
I wanted to give a report on my experience at HIMSS meeting with companies who each generously donated $500 to DonorsChoose.org.
In order to give some perspective, it is important to note that Centura is in the early stages of replacing our current EHR with Epic. Two areas of focus for me related to the Epic implementation were supplementing our training and go-live support and helping us jumpstart our Connect program.
With that background, here is a brief synopsis of each of the companies I met with at HIMSS. Please remember that I had 20 minutes with each firm, so these are impressions and not endorsements.
Full disclosure: we currently are working with Leidos.
Scott and team were checking in on the team in place at Centura and then we discussed our potential needs on training support and Connect. We had a very casual conversation due to the current working relationship.
Early Wednesday, I ran into a colleague from Colorado and we were discussing our never-ending pursuit of analytics. We both commented how great it would be if our HIE could find a company that could jump start such efforts. Enter QPID. Their platform seems to be an answer to the problems I had been discussing earlier and they are currently working with two HIEs as well as numerous health systems.
Drew and the team at Nordic were very informative on their experience supporting health systems implementing Epic. We discussed our challenges and will be having further discussions with Nordic on the areas where we may need assistance.
Full disclosure: we currently are working with TeraRecon.
This was a reminder that every organization needs to have regular meetings with all of their current partners to ensure they fully understand the solutions offered. Paul and his team quickly outlined a way we could potentially leverage our current solution to reduce our interface costs with Epic as well as bring outside images into the organization in a more efficient manner than is happening today. Follow up meetings are being scheduled.
Loyal readers will remember Mr. H writing that one donor was planning to teach me how to make balloon animals. Serra generously wanted to make a donation and also donated their time since I was behind schedule.
One of the issues we have at Centura is indexing of scanned documents, especially with our clinics. While we will be dramatically reducing the number of scanned documents with the implementation of Epic, it will never go to zero. EDCO appears to be a solution to help. They offer several solutions from total outsourcing of scanning to outsourcing the indexing of the documents. EDCO does not sell a document management system and we are not in the market for one. Their solution seems to be a good fit to solve an issue for us so further meetings are being scheduled.
PNA was on my list of people to talk to at HIMSS so I was excited to see them on my calendar. My interest was on their Connect offering and how they might help Centura jumpstart our efforts. If you are an Epic client and considering offering Connect, ask John to show you their eight-foot long Visio on the Connect process. It is impressive and sobering at the same time.
I had a lot of fun meeting with everyone and came away with follow up for the team at Centura. I want to apologize to all of the people who patiently waited for me when I fell behind schedule due to travel time between booths.
The most exciting part of this experience is that we raised $7.000! Thank you to the companies listed above and to the anonymous donor who matched everyone’s contributions. I would also like to thank Mr. H and Lorre for all of their work to make this happen.
What a GREAT example!! This is a great program and as a Greenville SC entrepreneur with an elementary school son – I truly appreciate it! I missed this offer – absolutely would have taken advantage of it – my fault but I hope you start a trend!