EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 10/24/24

Dr. Jayne Goes to HLTH

I managed to swing by the HLTH conference earlier this week, en route to other client work. Even though HLTH positions itself as the hipper and cooler of the healthcare technology conferences, it is still plagued by attendees behaving badly.

I was shocked at the number of people who stopped in the middle of high-traffic areas to read their phones, or who wandered oblivious of their surroundings because they were heads down. It’s not hard to step off to the side, and a little courtesy might just keep you from being slammed into by the crowd rushing from stage to stage trying to catch hot topic presentations.

Normally I am annoyed by people who are whistling — in the same way I’m annoyed by people who are having loud video chats on their phones or watching movies without headphones — but I had to smile a little when I realized that the guy walking in front of me was whistling one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

From my tour through the exhibit area, kudos to Steel Patriot Partners and its booth team for being on the alert and greeting passers-by with strong eye contact and using attendee names and titles, which was doable at this conference because the font on the badges was large enough to read as people were passing. The company is always solid in the hall, and I wish more teams would follow their example in being outward facing and engaging. My day continued on the upswing with a brief Jonathan Bush sighting and a trip to the Puppy Park, which always puts a smile on my face.

The Zappos team also had a strong booth work ethic, greeting people promptly and fielding questions about their employee engagement program. If you’re looking for something that’s more fun than the usual logo-bearing tchotchkes, they’re worth checking out. Especially with organizations encouraging team members to move more and improve their own personal health, making sure that everyone has appropriate footwear makes sense.

Speaking of footwear, IMO again brought a strong sock game as well as the usual highly polished dress shoes. This picture highlights the weirdness of the exhibit hall aisles, where there was bare concrete between the borders of exhibitor booths and a spongy purple runner that was placed down the centers of the aisles. The problem with the purple runner is that the sides curled up midday in some areas, creating a trip hazard. It was also weird to stand talking to people and having that uncarpeted no man’s land at the edge of the booth. I know that everyone is trying to save money, but it just felt a little too industrial, not to mention that one good slip-and-fall lawsuit will surely wipe out any savings that was had from the strategy.

Several booths, including behavioral health vendor Headspace, had arcade-style claw machines. Other eye-catching features seen on the show floor included the tried and true “spin the wheel and win a prize” gimmicks as well as notebooks, stress balls, and plenty of logo-bearing socks. I spotted a “Top Gun” Val Kilmer Iceman impersonator several times, complete with flight suit. He was amazingly close to the character in looks and bearing, including full swagger. I was never successful at figuring out what booth he was with, or in catching a good photo, so if you know the story or have a good picture, please share.

Nurses are superheroes, and these were even wearing the capes to prove it.

I made a couple of logistics notes during the meeting, the first of which was this sign that was placed near where attendees entered the exhibit hall through a tunnel of stage lighting. As a physician, I don’t feel very good about knowingly excluding a subset of attendees on the basis of a medical condition. It seems that as a healthcare conference we should be able to chill on the stage effects in order to include everyone.

There were also issues with lunch timing, as buffets were fully set, but with expo center staff blocking their opening. One line had a staffer who was doing 30-second countdowns as the lines grew, telling attendees “5 minutes” then “4 minutes 30 seconds” and so on. Finally, a HLTH team member came by and told them to go ahead and open the lines at the one-minute mark. I know they don’t want to open lines early if everything isn’t in place, but that wasn’t the case here. Swinging by again towards the end of lunch service, I noticed that they had one lunch area entirely closed with 45 minutes left in the lunch time, and in another area, three of four buffet lines were shut down with 35 minutes to go.

Part of the way that HLTH justifies its high prices is the food service, and it seemed a little lackluster compared to when I attended a couple of years ago. I also heard several complaints about the lack of adequate table seating during lunch, especially when food was served that required use of a fork and knife. Most people are less happy about trying to eat a piece of steak with a plastic knife and fork while sitting on a white sofa compared to using a table.

Although there was a good amount of lounge-style seating around the hall, I saw plenty of individuals who had just plopped in the middle of a sofa rather than choosing a seat at the end so that someone else could perhaps use the other end. That’s not HLTH’s fault as much as attendee manners, but future logistics plans might want to take that into consideration and add more individual seating for those who like to avoid being next to anyone. An architect friend of mine has a tremendous amount to say about the psychology of seating design, so I’m sure brilliant event planners can figure it out. Maybe someone can chip in an AI solution to generate suggestions.

Alas, it was a long day in the exhibit hall trenches and I had a plane to catch, so I left through an alternate exit door where I found this sign. I thought it was funny since it was facing the doors I had just come through. The other side was blank, so if they really wanted people to not use those doors, they probably should have turned it around, especially since it was (at least in my opinion) pretty funny.

I visited a couple of vendor parties during the evening. Despite us being in a post #MeToo era, I experienced some sexual harassment for the first time in a number of years. Too much alcohol definitely brings out the worst in some and doesn’t make boorish behavior better in others. One reader shared a picture of someone sleeping in a hotel hallway wearing their conference badge the next morning at 6 a.m. I’ll hold off on sharing that picture because it’s bad enough to wake up that way, let alone potentially lose your job over it, since we don’t know if they were just tired, lost their room key, or were under the influence of something else.

If you attended HLTH, what were your highlights? Anything you would change for next year? How was the Busta Rhymes show? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.