Monday Morning Update 2/27/12

HIMSS Final Notes 2/24/12

From Mr. H

My body is totally confused after a long week, a redeye flight home, lack of exercise because of overpriced Harrah’s facilities, and not having to make yet another trip to the Venetian. And here I am working on a Friday night nonetheless, with the large Monday Morning Update to write Saturday. I hope everybody makes it back OK with all the weather disruptions going on.

Bettina Dold of Acusis captured this moment on the show floor, which she titled,” HIMSS Men at Play.” People were having a blast (no pun intended) at these Merge Healthcare arcade games every time I strolled by.

Here’s the most exciting news of the week – the original OnBase magician was back! I’m telling you in all seriousness that this is the funniest and most talented guy working in Las Vegas this week, and that includes show lounge performers. I can’t really explain how masterful he is not just doing jaw-dropping magic tricks, but working the crowd, adding humor on the fly, and moving his audience into the booth for sales attention when he is finished. I look forward to him every year. Whatever they pay him isn’t enough. I wanted to ask him about his background since he seems to know a lot about OnBase and the industry in general, but you’ll never find a time that he doesn’t have a crowd around. Way to go, magic dude! You were the highlight of the conference as usual.

I don’t know what this means since I never did figure out how to find Booth 12953 in the poorly marked and laid out Hall G, but I suspect that if companies were paying HIMSS for “hidden gem” booth space, this sign isn’t going to pacify them.

Inga, Dr. Jayne, and I have individually listed our “how to work a booth as a rep” ideas. As a public service, I’d like to put this together into a checklist for HIMSS exhibitors: don’t sit on the job, don’t talk to your co-workers, etc. This is a potentially important masterwork to help guide the youngsters trying to make a place for themselves in healthcare IT, so help me out with your ideas. You don’t need to include the “confiscate all smart phones” item since that’s a given.

Thursday Booth Notes

• Lots of folks bailed on Thursday, so it was much quieter. I still say many of the serious prospects don’t come by until then, so it’s a shame that so many of the reps were sprawling, screwing around on their phones, and conducting animated and sometimes profanity-laden conversations among themselves as passers-by tried unsuccessfully to get their attention. In on area, I counted reps on phones and iPads in seven of eight booths, then four of six in the adjacent space.
• Cumberland Consulting Group caught my eye by having their HIStalk sign out, but they had probably the best consultation area that I saw, with nice seating and a net-like drape to separate areas off without making you feel like you’re in a box.
• Practice Fusion had some cool shirts and a great pitch. Kellie told me they have 32 million patients in their system and that quite a few of their physician users have stopped by.
• I decided to challenge Suzanne in the MobileMD booth, asking her innocently tough questions like, “Why did Siemens buy your company?” and “How do you like working for them?” She gave perfect answers.
• Krina at Ingenious Med, you were very good and engaging me and giving me a good, concise explanation of mobile charge capture for rounding physicians when I pretended I didn’t know anything about it.
• Salar had a row of candy jars and was making custom bags of treats for attendees. That was fun.
• Charlie Cook, president of Orchestrate Healthcare, set a great example for the troops as he engaged me in the booth periphery, got me to pause, and then moved quickly to the bullet lists of why I should care. Although I admit that I was looking at the HIStalkapalooza-winning shoes on display over his shoulder, courtesy of winner and company CEO Megan Cook.
• It takes special talent to be a theater barker to get people to move off the pedestrian highway to sit down for a demo or presentation, but the best I heard all week was Becky from VMware. She was fresh and funny, even though this was in the waning exhibit hall hours on Thursday.
• Good idea, PC Connection – putting out a sign that attendees could print their boarding passes at your booth. Well done.
• I was entertained at Network Hardware Resale, which was giving away a remote-controlled helicopter as a prize. They gave it a test drive all the way to the high ceiling, then promptly crashed it from 40 feet up and in all its lit-up glory directly into the head of an attendee.
• T-System gave me a nice overview of what they do. I already knew, so they passed the test.
• I sat in on a presentation by Andres Jimenez, MD of ImplementHIT, who talked about using Nuance’s Dragon with Allscripts. Seems like a nice guy, a surgeon finishing a PhD in education. A quote: “It’s not about Meaningful Use with the government. It’s more about going home to have a meaningful dinner with my wife.”
• I spent much of Thursday downstairs in Hall G because I felt bad for the vendors HIMSS put down there. On the other hand, several I talked to said they had been quite busy, so hopefully attendees found their way down.
• Carstens was playing classical music in their booth. I think Dr. Jayne or Inga mentioned this, but it really was effective.
• My favorite booth person of the whole conference was Colleen at the 1Call booth in the Mobile Health exhibit. They do secure messaging for mobile devices. I felt bad for her since she was sitting in the equivalent of a hidden telephone booth, but she was just as sweet and fun as she could be, plus she explained their product effectively. If I’d had a trophy in my pocket, she would have gone home with it.
• iSirona was hopping in Hall G. They gave me a short overview of their medical device connectivity product. They also gave me a tee shirt.
• Megan at Intelligent InSites gave me a really nice overview of their RTLS solution when I pretended to not even know what that means, telling her I stopped by only to “see what the colorful diagram on the monitor is.” OK, I’m good at playing stupid, which maybe isn’t something to brag on. She moved me right into benefits and competitive advantage without breaking the flow and without blowing me off since I clearly wasn’t a prospect.
• I cold-called Holon Solutions, asking “what do you do.” They told me pretty well.
• The Apixio guy was fun in a SoCal way, drawing me in to see their EMR search solution. They also gave a free trial, which I need to try since it’s sitting in my e-mail inbox. I asked an obvious questions he couldn’t answer, though: he only demonstrated searching by patient name, which is not only impractical but dangerous, and hadn’t heard of the idea of searching by medical record number. He was still cool.
• Inga misspoke on the Blue Hair Girls. I kept wondering why I didn’t see them in the SIS booth as she wrote, the reason being that it was The SSI Group.
• I tried several times to figure out what RL Solutions does since they had a very cool, Apple-like booth on the far end of the hall, but every time I trolled, their reps were deep in conversation only with each other and refused to react to eye contact. They’ve missed their window of opportunity since I now don’t even care.
• Ruckus Wireless had a really creepy stuffed dog in the booth.
• Barco had the best beer I’ve ever seen on the show floor. Joe the bartender was professionally handing over fresh-from-the-ice bottles of great European beer like Hoegarden, Stella, and Leffe. It was superb.
• My new best bud rep is Joel from Fixmo, a Toronto mobile device security company. I was drinking my Hoegarden from Barco and we started talking beer talk, to the point that I went down and got him a Hoegarden of his own so we could emulate a bar setting as we elbow-leaned and swigged. He gave me some brands to try: Rickard, Brador, and Steam Whistle. I saw him interacting with passers-by and he is very engaging and friendly. I just didn’t feel that invisible shield between us that keeps you from really engaging with a rep.
• I was hanging out with the Medicomp folks as the exhibits closed at 6:00 Thursday evening. I’ve never stayed past closing time, so it was interesting to watch armies of workers and equipment immediately tearing down all that glitzy magic you enjoyed (or tolerated) all week. They were pulling up carpet almost before the last people exited, and by the time I left at around 6:45, the hall had mostly bare concrete floors, all the booth lighting was powered down, and exhibit people were tearing down the village they had built earlier in the week. By the time you read this, there’s probably another conference in that same space that looks like it’s been there forever.
• Here’s another recognition. I wandered in a cul de sac deep in the bowels of Hall G (or is that Hell G?) Eight small booths facing each other, with seven of them featuring reps sprawling and Facebooking. One booth stood out with a sentry-like presence in Lanette Fugit, who was fronting the Mobile Iron booth.  She was like a guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: ramrod straight, eyes unwavering, ignoring the people around her who were mostly just screwing around. She engaged me, went smoothly into a short and obviously well-rehearsed but not overly glib informational pitch, and then steered me to the two technical guys working with her as the handoff for geek talk. I verified that she’s a contract person. Her pic is below, but despite her obvious attractiveness, I wasn’t even thinking that – I was thinking she’s the one person who cares enough to be professional when she could have gotten away with less since she’s not even an employee.

Some Booth Crawl Winners

Here’s Franklin Crownover, pharmacy informatics coordinator at Tufts Medical Center and Booth Crawl contestant, accepting his iPad from Chris from Shareable Ink. Some of the contestants obviously check e-mail regularly and like iPads immensely since they showed up almost immediately to pick it up after I e-mailed them that they’d won, which I like since it indicates that they were excited about it. Facebook post here. Thanks to all those who played for visiting the booths of the sponsoring companies. Winner Dan Williams e-mailed me to say, “It is a great way to see everything and especially to meet the HIStalk sponsors.”

Another iPad winner – Jonathan Rubin MD of Froedtert Hospital-Medical College of Wisconsin. His prize came from Surgical Information Systems, which commemorated it on their Facebook. I note his enthusiasm as evidenced by the blurred thumbs-up gesture, caught mid-stream as he welcomes his new electronic family member.

Another Booth Crawl winner – Anuj Desai, director of business development for New York eHealth Collaborative. Why was the photo taken in front of the HIMSS bookstore, you might ask? Because the presenter is Guy Scalzi of Aspen Advisors (on the right), who co-authored the book IT Governance in Hospitals and Health Systems, published by HIMSS this month. You may remember Guy from his former lives as an FCG senior vice president and CIO at New York-Presbyterian.

Rick Beberman of Fulcrum Methods seems to be just as pleased to be holding our HIStalk sign as he does to be presenting a brand new iPad for the enjoyment of Jim Hetherington, HIE applications manager at Catholic Health Initiatives. I swear even the boxes Apple uses are sexy. Jim also e-mailed me a photo he took in one of the education sessions, in which a young lady was wearing a coat that was almost identical to the one work by Evan Frankel at HIStalkapalooza. I’m not running it since she might not appreciate the comparison although it’s definitely there.

Cynthia Hartmann, come on down! To Vitera Healthcare Solutions, that is, which presented Cynthia (of University of Mississippi Medical Center) with her shiny new iPad.

Apple loves AirStrip Technologies and is always putting their cool remote monitoring solutions into their commercials and on-stage announcements, so it’s only fitting that Donna Morrow, chief of client operations officer for the company, presents Anthony Schuster MD with an iPad. Tony is CMIO with the outstanding H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL. I note with pride that his LinkedIn profile indicates that he’s a member the HIStalk Fan Club, which I swear had nothing to do with his victory.

Here’s a brilliant idea. We still have a few iPads to give away since we didn’t have enough successful Booth Crawl contestants (more info to follow on the additional winners) but ICA drew their winner from entrants in the food bank donation project. Congratulations to Lisa Lyon, clinical informatics coordinator at Cherokee Nation of Pryor, OK. They were the first tribe to earn an EHR incentive payment from the state’s Medicaid program. That’s Lisa on the right in the group shot above as they accepted the incentive payment last July. Thanks for the work you do and enjoy your iPad, courtesy of Informatics Corporation of America.

Gabe Davis, Booth Crawl winner from Texas Health Resources, e-mailed me to say that he had a ton of fun, and that “I can honestly say that I made several connections with vendors that I wouldn’t have normally spent time with. It was a great idea.” Gabe’s iPad came from API Healthcare.

 

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From Inga

 

If you missed HIStalkapalooza, check out the video above from ESD. Now that I think about it, I stayed in my one little spot most of the evening and didn’t get to see all the other fun stuff going on. It makes me so happy to see so many people having a fun time! The fashions — from the shoes to the gowns to the tuxedoes — were fantastic! A year from now when Mr. H and I are pulling our hair out with our pre-HIMSS activities, I will pull up this video and remember it was all worth it. Many thanks again to ESD, our emcees, our HIStalk Elvis, and our judges for making it a magical evening.

Many kind folks have forwarded notes expressing their thanks and appreciation for both HIStalkapalooza and our sponsor luncheon. Here is a sampling:

Our team had a lovely time at the HIStalk luncheon. Thanks for recognizing your sponsors and the contributions you make to the industry.

Just wanted to thank you for the invite to last night’s event. I had a great time and got to catch up with a lot of folks I hadn’t seen in a while.

Thanks for the IngaTini(s) and the fantastic hospitality tonight.

Best party at HIMSS year after year.

Another awesome HIStalkapalooza! Jonathan Bush was as simultaneously irreverent and insightful as always. Whoa, those HISsies!

I posted a number of photos from the party on the HIStalk Facebook page, including many of the shoe fashions. I am happy to report my shoes were deemed attractive enough to capture the eye of our shoe judges.

I am hoping someone filmed the HISsies as well because Jonathan Bush was on his A game yet again. He’s funny, smart, doesn’t hold back, and is pure entertainment. And he drinks very large beers.

HIMSS says that as of Friday morning, attendance hit 37,032 attendees, surpassing HIMSS11’s 31,500 attendance figure. A total of 1,123 companies exhibited.

There is nothing hotter than a guy in a pink tuxedo with lights. That’s Trey Lauderdale of Voalte, the company known for their pink apparel.

I didn’t get too many trinkets this year: a couple of t-shirts (including an XXL one from Medicomp – whoops); a couple of hats (I really like the Trustwave one); chocolate; and a few pens. Though not swag, the Intelligent InSites people made sure I received the above poster. I love it! Intelligent Insites offers an RTLS solution that requires less walking for nurses to find equipment and therefore allowing them to switch to the hot shoes like the ones pictured. I just like gazing at the shoes.

Speaking of shoes, despite mostly wearing flats all day, my poor little feet are swollen and have blisters. I am thinking it will be a barefoot weekend.

My brain as well as my feet are exhausted, so that’s it for now. All in all, it was a great week and a great conference.

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From Dr. Jayne

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Inga play Quipstar yesterday afternoon, although I must say I was quite jealous of the hardcore security detail that was outside her dressing room (complete with ear pieces!) and the paparazzi that were on hand to capture her entrance. Medicomp did it up right and even had a shoe-cam to focus on her seriously spiky stilettos.

There seemed to be a bit more buzz in the hall – brighter faces and a shift in the general tone from Tuesday’s eerie quiet. Maybe people are doing well in the casino and it’s making them more chipper. I noted huge crowds at the Nuance booth as well as at ICA,  where I dropped my entry to win cash for my local food bank. Lots of friendly folks there who just wanted to chat.

I connected with a couple of specific people to get answers to some technical questions about products that I had posed earlier in the week. It was nice to have follow-up and know that people understand this is a time for many of us to accomplish a lot of data gathering in a short period of time.

But alas, all good HIMSS must come to an end and for me today (Thursday) was the last day. I had to sprint home to prepare for a Big Meeting tomorrow with some physicians who take a dim view of being rescheduled for what they perceive to be merely another trade show. I found a forlorn little post card in my mailbox, urging me to visit the ANX booth to pick up my special “hangover kit” and experience a special photo op inspired by “Hangover.” I hope they’re inspired to follow up with their marketing team to find out why their mailing wasn’t postmarked until February 16, which made delivery prior to HIMSS nearly impossible.

I was happy that my suitcase only gained a pound and a half during this Vegas trip – probably because I took a lot of smart phone photos of interesting materials to reference, rather than picking them up. The airport was full of HIMSS survivors and I spotted several FormFast fedoras as well. I’m looking forward to New Orleans next year (better have some beignets in the booths, people!) but right now I have to cozy up with the Stage 2 proposed rule in all of its 455 pages of black and white glory.

From HIMSS 2/23/12 – Inga’s Update

It’s Thursday afternoon. I left the exhibit floor a bit early to get my bag and write a few updates before getting on my plane for home. A reader suggested my posts have not been very insightful the last couple of days (sorry) and another suggested they have been too short (sorry.) I’ve been going non-stop, taking plenty of notes, so I will attempt to reclaim my insightfulness over the next couple of days as I share details of my HIMSS experience.

I’d say the most-discussed topic this year was the announcement of the proposed Stage 2 MU rules, followed by the ICD-10 delay. Since the rules were not published until Thursday morning, few people had a handle on what was included. Dr. Mostashari’s overview Wednesday morning didn’t include many details, though apparently some of Thursday’s sessions went deeper. So the first part of the week was all about speculation of what was going to be included, followed by a few “what did you understand was included” type conversations. Of course, many folks also grumbled about the rules not being announced a few weeks ago.

On the ICD-10 front, many were speculating that ICD-10 would be delayed indefinitely and that we’d stick with ICD-9 until transitioning to ICD-11. I pity the vendors who had invested years of development work to facilitate the ICD-9 to 10 transition.

Typically at HIMSS we also hear official or unofficial news of acquisitions or mergers. If there were any such deals this year, they flew under my radar. You did see new booths and refreshed marketing spin from several of the entities that have recently changed their name or rebranded, including Optum, Vitera, and M*Modal.

Speaking of spin, I visited one of the relatively new ambulatory cloud-based EMR vendor whose small space was in the downstairs exhibit hall (or the “dungeon” as one of the downstairs vendors termed it.) I can’t say I saw enough of EMR to form an opinion, but I did smile when the young sales guy explained how the product was developed to adapt to the physician’s workflow. I recall using very similar words when I sold EMR software 10 years ago. Seems to me that if you are marketing a product running on the latest greatest technology and with a sexy interface that you should figure out a fresher pitch.

Rather than sticking with my traditionally more comfortable ambulatory-focused world, I sat through a few demonstration of inpatient products, including Cerner Millennium. The demo featured a high-level look at a new (or coming soon?) version that includes a new chart note entry screen. The most curious part of the demo was the sales guy’s comment that the chart note entry is now laid out more like Epic’s.

Several companies were promoting new products that feature natural language processing. I got a peek at QuadraMed’s computer-assisted coding module, which uses M*Modal’s NLP technology. Cool stuff.

Practice Fusion always seemed to have decent traffic and I spent a few minutes asking questions.  The company says it has 150,000 clinical users, of which 40% are physicians, and since rolling out their MU version in September, over 300 EPs have attested. They continue to tweak their ad module, which includes advanced technology to narrowly target the interests of individual physicians and their individual patients and diagnoses.

The Meditech booth was hopping each time I walked by, even though they were not in one of the major thoroughfares.

Allscripts’ booth was the size of a city block, and a busy city block at that. One of the Allscripts execs told me he walked through the downstairs exhibit hall and it brought back memories of not too many years ago when Allscripts had a similar small budget and presence.

A reader e-mailed me this comment: “I am concerned about the industry’s commitment to cleanliness because I can tell you that 70% of the male attendees don’t wash their hands in the restrooms.” I will have to take the reader’s word on that one.

I enjoyed Dr. Mostashari’s Thursday morning keynote. I will start by saying he is a dapper dresser and was wearing a dark pin striped suit, white shirt, and his signature bow tie (yellow.) He also strikes me as a regular, down-to-earth, and smart guy who believes in his organization’s mission. In his talk he highlighted the last few years of EMR adoption, the ONC’s and CMS’s role, and discussed what needs to happen next. One person I asked called Mostashari’s keynote “brilliant.” Another said the whole message could have be summarized with a simple, “Go, team, go!”  I think the content, balanced with the engaging delivery and bow tie, was not necessarily “brilliant” but solid nonetheless.

I had a chance to walk the floor with a physician and later with a CIO. I have to admit I often felt ignored by vendors when I was with them. I realize that the CIO and the doctor are the real prospects but I was a little offended when a couple of vendors barely glanced in my direction. It’s hard to be a diva.

A few booth observations:

NextGen always comes up with entertaining talent to attract a crowd and this year was no exception. NextGen had  a “spelling bee” that included some odd-ball contestants, including a goofy-looking John McEnroe. It may not have been as captivating as last year’s artists, but still fun.

Medecision had a neat ice sculpture and was offering an assortment of unique drinks, from iced coffee in the morning to cocktails in the afternoon.

athenahealth updated its booth a bit and added bamboo and grass here and there. The changes were subtle, but I liked it.

eClinicalWorks never has a huge booth, but always seems to attract a decent crowd.

At 12:30, the line for gelato at Harris’s booth was so long that I am guessing I wasn’t the only one who found it difficult to grab a quick lunch.

Was it me or was there many shades of orange? Optum, Vitera, and Elsevier, to name a few.

dbMotion’s four demo stations and center conference table were full every time I walked by.

Thank you Perceptive for the tee shirt, which appears to be a women’s cut instead of the boring unisex style.

I think my favorite booth was CareTech’s. It was not one of the huge booths and what made it unique was its use of black and white photographs to communicate its vision. So many of the booths are heavy on the bright colors and huge signs, but CareTech’s was simple and not overstated. Well done.

Dell’s booth, on the other hand, was accented in fun colors (pink, yellow, blue, green.) Tastefully done and attractive.

T-System’s booth was decked out to resemble an ER, complete with the “H” hospital sign, wheelchairs, and blood pressure cuffs. Very clever.

Optum’s new booth (orange) was very open and included a theater and conference rooms. I prefer the booths that don’t require you to pass through a front reception area and encourage attendees to walk in and check things out.

3M had a dome-like tent for their demo theater. Different and cool.

MesAssurant had a good-size booth with couches and hardly any booth staff. They had monitors that look like they might have been running PowerPoints, but the PowerPoints weren’t running. I couldn’t figure out if the lack of staff was intentional and they just wanted to offer attendees comfy couches a feel-good space with subtle marketing messages.

McKesson’s booth was of course big, but not as imposing as it has been in some previous years.

I didn’t see any creepy mimes, body contortionists, gorilla costumes, or black body suits. Maybe I missed them or maybe vendors have retired those gimmicks.

I still have not provided many comments about HIStalkapalooza, which was fantastic from the fashion, to the drinks, to the wonderfully accommodating hosts. Look for that in the next day or two. I didn’t get too much in the way of swag this year, but I have photos of a few of the best goodies.

Happy travels if you are heading home today. If you have already made it home, happy wading through your e-mail inbox. And if you were not able to be in Vegas this year, I hope that between Mr. H, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Travis, and me we have shared enough to make you feel that not everything that happens in Vegas stays there.

Booth Crawl Winners

We were overly ambitious on the Booth Crawl requirements given the exhibit hall logistics and the short timeliness. That challenge made it hard for our players to complete the contest successfully. Still, we know it was possible because 12 contestants who are employed by provider organizations got all the answers right by Wednesday evening.

Thanks to everyone who played, including those who visited the booths of the sponsors but were unable to finish in time.

We’ll have more later, including the correct answers to the questions and perhaps some photos of the winners.

Stop by the following booths today to pick your iPad.

Susan Heichert, SVP
Allina Hospitals and Clinics
MED3OOO – pick up at Medicomp, Booth # 855.

Anthony Schuster MD, CMIO
Moffitt Cancer Center
AirStrip, Booth # 870

Cynthia Hartmann, Director, IT Solutions Consultants
University of Mississippi Medical Center
Vitera Healthcare Solutions, Booth # 445

Jim Hetherington, HIE Applications Manager
Catholic Health Initiatives
Fulcrum Methods, Booth # 13247, Kiosk 6

Jonathan Rubin MD
Froedtert Hospital-Medical College of WI
Surgical Information Systems, Booth # 1339

Gabein Lee Davis, Clinical Analyst
Texas Health Partners
API Healthcare, Booth # 2617

Rita Cartwright, Sr. Business Systems Analyst
Tucson Medical Center
Access, Booth # 860

John-Paul Jones MD, CMIO
CentraHealth
MedVentive, Booth # 64661 (ACO Knowledge Center)

Anuj Desai, Director of Business Development
New York eHealth Collaborative
Aspen Advisors (they will contact you for delivery)

Dan Williams, CIS Administrator
Saint Francis Medical Center
dbMotion, Booth # 4219

Franklin Crownover, Pharmacy Informatics Coordinator
Tufts Medical Center
Shareable Ink, Booth # 7100

Aaron Spratt, Director of ARRA implementation
Saint Francis Medical Center
Awarepoint, Booth # 3412

From HIMSS 2/22/12

From Mr. H

Update: I’ve posted Inga’s recap here.

You could feel the energy suck out of the convention center as the ONC Meaningful Use Stage 2 Road Show took over the conference rooms and discussion subjects. I felt bad for anyone – vendor or provider – who came to the conference for other reasons since those were unceremoniously shoved out of the way. ONC said they tried to get the Stage 2 stuff out last week but got held up. I would have suggested waiting another week instead of cramming it into the HIMSS agenda without having anything tangible to put out, like detailed PowerPoints or the draft wording. They didn’t even have room assignments since they usurped the schedule at the last minute, so those had to be read out in the first presentation on Wednesday. It’s almost like when a vendor pre-announces a product that isn’t finished just to keep a competitor from getting attention in the mean time, except what could have been getting attention was more immediate concerns than draft legislation that won’t really kick in for a couple of years.

But I will say that the entire ONC crew came across as personable and occasionally amusing, even if Farzad didn’t attend HIStalkapalooza like he’d said he might (I’d guess he was too busy wrapping up the legislation.) Overall, I feel good about the whole process, other than the timing and the fact that I don’t like my tax money being used to buy equipment for private businesses. It sounds like Stage 2 gets closer to benefiting patients than just setting the theoretical stage as Stage 1 does.

I went to a few educational sessions today. All were unremarkable, which is pretty much par for the HIMSS course. What I blame: having to submit abstracts almost a year in advance, sessions that are really too long to stay interesting in many cases, and button-down presenters who do presentations as they learned by observation, i.e. badly (reading from PowerPoint bullet lists, over-preparing, and not making any attempt to engage attendees.) I saw some of my pet peeve behavior – attendees who grab the post-presentation microphone under the guise of asking a question, but then pontificate endlessly with obvious pride in their own wonderfulness. I honestly wish presenters wouldn’t even allow questions at the end, other than to provide me a cue to sprint for the door.

Heard from a moderator in a session today: “Please turn off your Palm Pilots.” I need clarification of whether he was being ironic or was ill-advisedly displaying a profound lack of contemporary technology knowledge.

Stand by on the Booth Crawl winners. I have the list, but I need to clarify a couple of things before we can post it.

 

I know I keep saying it, but ESD did a super job with HIStalkapalooza. I wanted to hug every of those green-dressed ladies for giving up their evening to keep things running smoothly, but since I couldn’t, I compromised by giving Brittanie a couple. She almost made me mist over a little because the whole event obviously meant so much to her and to ESD. Do me a favor – drop by their booth (#4616) and say thanks. You have an ulterior motive as well – they had a full professional video crew filming everything and the polished final version is running in the booth. If you were there, you may well see yourself on the video since they got a lot of crowd shots. If you weren’t there, you’ll get to see some of the stage antics. At least I feel justified on having Mrs. HIStalk assemble all those beauty queen sashes due to my lack of time since everybody had fun flaunting theirs.

Check out these fun badge ribbons from Liaison Healthcare. Ambitious attendees may strut around with their CIO or presenter badges, but I’m happier with my Meaningfully Useless one.

One of our sponsor lunch attendees wanted to commend Duke University Hospital CIO Art Glasgow for speaking there. “He was excellent. Gave a great perspective on how valuable the site is for a CIO.” Art was the classy part of the agenda. Inga, Dr. Jayne, and I just stammered around looking silly in our costumes, so it went downhill fast once Art finished up. We’re delighted that he (and our sponsors) attended. It’s kind of overwhelming for anonymous, amateurish bloggers to see a roomful of industry experts like that since we’re used to working in empty rooms with computers. We’re somewhere between smarter than we sound in person and dumber than we sound in writing.

A reader reminded me about the Pub Nights that Encore Health Resources always puts on at HIMSS (he didn’t exactly remind me since I didn’t know about it, but it’s an Ivo thing that’s fun.) “Rather than do a party one night at HIMSS, Encore Health Resources does Pub Nights every night. I’ve been Sun and Mon and each night had several hundred people there. Seems to be the place where CIOs like to congregate after hours.  Free beer and wine and funky psychedelic mugs. Lagasse Stadium – Lower Level of the Venetian. I don’t think you need an invite. I ran into Ivo and took this pic. He said it was the only title he ever deserved.”
 
Seriously, vendors – make your reps turn in their smart phones when they show up for work on the exhibit hall floor. You might as well give them a Gameboy for all the time they spend screwing around with them instead of actually trying to provide a professional impression to folks you’ve paid dearly to impress. I realize that everyone under 30 can’t survive more than two minutes without checking to make sure something earth-shattering hasn’t been posted on Facebook or that they haven’t been Twittered about, but it’s just embarrassing to see this on such a wide scale. They have living, breathing prospects right in front of them – nothing on that phone is more potentially valuable to your company enough to warrant carrying it around and I guarantee they won’t be able to keep their hands off it.

 

I think the strong fashion interest of Inga and Dr. Jayne is rubbing off on me. I saw an impeccably dressed guy in the exhibit hall and thought Inga and Dr. J would enjoy his photo if I could snap one surreptitiously. I couldn’t, but I ran across him later in his booth and explained why I wanted his pic. It’s Mike Mosquito, president and CEO of HealthNovation, an Atlanta-based company he founded that offers technical compliance tools and services for meeting HIPAA and NIST requirements. I wish you could see the razor-sharp creases in the pocket handkerchief that matches his tie and cufflinks, not to mention his really cool-looking Italian shoes (Delli Aldo, which are super inexpensive, so extra points for thriftiness).  On top of being an extremely sharp dresser, Mike was maybe the friendliest, most fun person I’ve met at the conference – he reads HIStalk and said we’d mentioned him before when he wore some outlandish golf attire (was that redundant?) to a tournament on a dare. It would be fun to surprise Mike with a bunch of visitors at the booth on Thursday, so if you’re inclined to participate in a timed-release flash mob, drop over to Booth #3869 and say hello to our new BFF. Hopefully he won’t disappoint by deciding to slack off with shorts and a tee shirt.

 

A reader asked for a picture of the $1.99 foot long hot dog I mentioned in my first conference post (kind of an odd thing to want details about, but I’m not judging.) It’s from Casino Royale, a low rent but fun casino between Harrah’s and the Venetian. I bought one this evening just to get a shot for the reader. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and I had just finished an icy Blue Moon draft beer courtesy of the Forcare booth folks, so I couldn’t resist downing this particular snouts-and-tails tube steak even though I wasn’t planning to. It was OK given appropriate expectations and pre-lubrication with the same place’s $1 Michelobs, so that’s a $3 lunch or dinner that would appall doctors of all specialties. They have ketchup, but nobody over age 10 should be putting that on a hot dog no matter how many $1 beers they’ve downed (as I constantly remind Mrs. HIStalk when she does it.) Sriracha would have been good, though.

Inga was a celebrity player in Medicomp’s Quipstar game show held on the exhibit hall floor. She joked that to protect her anonymity and to stroke her needy ego, she would need bodyguards, a limo, and Van Halen-style M&Ms of a single color (green.) They played along, so here she is egressing her limo as heat-packing muscle protect her from the adoring throngs (other than the paparazzo who got this shot.) She didn’t win, but her charity of choice did, courtesy of a $5,000 donation from Medicomp. The funny thing is that in Las Vegas, public behavior apparently would have to be a lot more bizarre than this to warrant anyone’s attention.

Here’s a pic of Orchestrate Health CEO Megan Cook, showing off her awards (Best in KLAS, Inga Loves My Shoes) and as the company says, “showing off our love for HIStalk.” Cool!

Lady Pharmacist sent this picture of a jewel-encrusted skull at the entrance to the Palazzo. Very tasteful.

A reader didn’t like my comment that Hall G (downstairs) has some small and weird booths, thinking I was criticizing the companies there. I wasn’t – I’m criticizing HIMSS for selling space that is just not getting traffic equal to the upstairs booths (I asked the people downstairs, who had plenty of time to chat since I was one of few people strolling around there). The oddball booths I mentioned aren’t vendor booths – they have colleges down there, government agencies, member organizations, and a bunch of other stuff that is hard to figure out (not to mention vast cafeteria and Bistro HIMSS spaces.) It’s not the fault of the vendors there, and I’d certainly make the trip down this week since there are definitely vendors worth checking out (which I did today.) I think they would be glad to see you if you drop by. It’s hard to find from inside the other halls, but if you go outside the halls and then down a level in just the right place, you can get there. It’s not quite as hard as trying to figure out how to escape the main exhibit halls, which make it really hard (maybe intentionally) to find the doors out to daylight.

Random Booth Observations

• eClinical Works had our sign out. Thanks!
• The Sunquest booth had a cool spiral staircase going upstairs, and like they do every year, they had the coolest tote bags on the show floor. These are seriously cool beach bags, way above the quality of anything else I saw.
• Encore Health Resources had a fake fireplace in their booth and were looping slides with consultant bios.
• API Healthcare had our sign out and I had a nice chat with a couple of the reps there. They were on point, engaging me easily within seconds.
• Digital Prospectors had our sign out. These were some fun guys.
• A new exhibitor called Innovatient had an interesting electronic whiteboard for patient rooms that fed into a nursing station monitoring app, complete with video feeds.
• Nuance had our sign out. They announced the winner of the 2012 Mobile Clinician Voice Challenge as the iPad-based SparrowEDIS (video here.) I was one of the judges and will have more later, including an interview with the winner. The announcement also describes the other apps that were in the final group. It was a fun contest.
• Nuance e-mailed to say that it is awarding HIMSS attendees who upload Instagram photos with the hashtag #HIT12 with a $125 prize. Check it out here. I’m not sure they listed all the rules since surely not everybody gets $125, but someone will clarify I’m sure.
• FormFast was giving away cool Frank Sinatra-style fedoras. I wondered where people were getting those. Like a man’s shirt, they look strangely alluring on women.
• I had a very nice chat with the people at Companion Data Services.
• I got a demo of SOTI, a mobile device management system (monitoring, security, policy enforcement, remote control, etc.) They’re offering a 30-day free trial. Hospitals will probably need something like this if they’re going to pursue a “bring your own device” mobile policy.
• Harris had a full gelato bar in their booth. The mango flavor was excellent.
• Intelligent InSites had a booth downstairs in Hall G. They had our sign out. Thanks!
• Kony is downstairs too, running workshops on how to develop mobile device apps using their IDE. I chatted with one of their partners and she said Kony basically owns the apps development market.
• Etransmedia is in Hall G too, and with our sign out besides (thanks!) They’re partnering with Costco to sell MyWay for $499 per month, but they also do HIE stuff. I asked the guy if they were getting a lot of traffic and he said it was pretty good, but he was surprised that so many potential investors are showing up cold to see what the company’s doing. That’s an interesting observation – I guess quite a few investment types cruise the booths looking for potential investments. Another good reason to exhibit, I guess.
• The HealthUnity people had some really cool green scarves on the ladies and diamond pattern sweaters on the men.
• Allscripts had a good idea for their demo stations – a folding tent sign that said “Private demo in progress” to prevent pushy passers-by from hijacking a demo.
• John at CTG’s booth gave me a good overview of their consulting services.
• athenahealth’s theater presentation schedule had the ICD-10 sessions marked out with an explanation: “Postponed due to widespread industry failure.”

From Dr. Jayne

With all of yesterday’s activities, I didn’t get to give as full a report on the exhibit hall as I would have liked. This year’s HIMSS exhibitors are quite subdued compared to last year. I saw far fewer quirky costumes (although there were a few, which I will detail) and a general lack of buzz. Maybe it’s because ONC’s release of Meaningful Use Stage 2 somewhat upstaged everything, maybe it’s a downturn in budgets, who knows. No contortionists or booth reps throwing moon pies this year. Many booth reps were generally apathetic – I was actually ignored at a couple of booths while reps played on their iPhones.

I toured the hall yesterday with HIStalk gadabout Evan Frankel. Full credit is given to Net Optics, who lured us from our wandering with the promise of a 90-second presentation in comfortable seats. Although it went much longer than that, I enjoyed the presenter’s hand motions and breathy sarcasm every time he said the name of the product, Phantom.

Our next stop was Precyse, where Evan posed with what I assume was supposed to be an “I Love Lucy” model handing out chocolate. I’m still not sure how it tied into the theme of the booth, but at least they were reaching out to connect with the crowd.

We stopped by Apixio to look at their population management tool and there were some funny quirks to their demo, which I enjoyed. The simulated scanned patient documents included off-kilter scans with occasional speckles, hospital documents with mis-transcribed words, and even a coffee cup ring.

Quest Diagnostics had a cowboy doing lasso tricks at their Care360 booth, but he was wrapping up as we came by. We were intrigued by a man speeding by in what looked like a Wilderness Scouts outfit and wanted to trail him to his booth, but it turned out he was just hustling to the men’s room.

I liked HipLink’s cool pit crew shirts. The company does integrated paging and mass notification – in another word, outreach. You’ll notice they differentiate themselves from other booth staff because they are actually doing outreach – facing the aisle, looking to engage, and NOT staring at their phones.

As a sequel to last year’s Indiana Jones hats, this year FormFast was giving out kicky fedoras, a la the Rat Pack. Starting to wear down a bit, we had to stop by the Harris booth’s Gelato Bar and I was impressed by my new sidekick’s ability to predict what I’d order.

PACSmate had this cute cart that would look adorable in a pediatrics office.

Mr. H mentioned that he ran into me toting a blue martini, courtesy of MEDecision. I was surprised to see them serving martinis at 1 pm and although grateful for a little refreshment, quickly discovered that their secret recipe seemed to only include two ingredients: Everclear and Powerade.

After the ONC update this morning (which I must admit made me feel largely queasy) it was back to the exhibits again. Vendors seemed a bit more eager to engage, but I was kind of creeped out by one who responded to my “thanks, but not now” rejection of his pitch with an offer of free hugs. Not exactly professional, dude.

The staff at Inspire WiFi were engaging and friendly two days in a row and today were downright helpful. They’re located in Booth 5061 (look for their “pain in the gluteus” graphic) which happens to be right next to an exhibit hall map. When I stopped to locate a booth, the staffer asked if he could help me. It’s good to run across genuinely nice guys. They offer exclusive patient/guest networks for hospitals (as well as hotels and apartments) with no upfront capital expenditure, which is appealing.

Giveaway of the day: Document Storage Systems had pink flamingo pens that were eye-catching. They also support one of my favorite endeavors, Honor Flight, so stop by and check them out.

The razz of the day goes to LexisNexis, whose booth was entirely empty when I came by. I was going to ask them about their white paper on the role of organized crime in healthcare, which does bring up some interesting points.

DrFirst had their superhero manning the booth, the DrFirst Defender. He really should have worn those boots to HIStalkapalooza!

Speaking of coulda-shoulda-woulda, this gentleman needs to make sure to request an invitation to HIStalkapalooza next year.

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HISsies 2012 Winners

Note: anyone could nominate candidates for all categories. The most-often nominated were placed on the ballot, with voting limited to the HIStalk e-mail subscriber list with one vote per reader. Agree or disagree, voting reflects the opinions of around 1,000 HIStalk reader-voters.

Smartest Vendor Action Taken
Google shuts down Google Health

Stupidest Vendor Action Taken
GE and Microsoft move their healthcare products to a new joint venture

Best Healthcare IT Vendor or Consulting Firm
Epic

Worst Healthcare IT Vendor or Consulting Firm
GE

Best Leader of a Healthcare IT Vendor or Consulting Firm
Judy Faulkner, Epic

Best Provider User of Healthcare IT
Kaiser Permanente

Most Promising Technology Development
Mobile health

Most Overrated Technology
Social media

Most Overused Buzzword
Cloud

When ______ Talks, People Listen
Farzad Mostashari, ONC

Most Effective Healthcare IT Provider Executive
Ed Marx, Texas Health Resources

Most Effective Medical / Clinical Informatics Professional
Paul Tang, Palo Alto Medical Foundation

Industry Figure With Whom You’d Most Like to Have a Few Beers
Jonathan Bush, athenahealth

Industry Figure In Whose Face You’d Most Like to Throw a Pie
John Hammergren, McKesson

HIStalk Healthcare IT Lifetime Achievement Award
Judy Faulkner, Epic

HIStalk Healthcare IT Industry Figure of the Year
Judy Faulkner, Epic

From HIMSS 2/22/12 Inga’s Update

From Inga

I participated in Medicomp’s Quipstar. I lost, but I am blaming my sunglasses because I couldn’t see the keyboard to find the answers. However, Medicomp did donate $5,000 to my favorite charity, so I accept the humiliation of my loss. Plus, the green M&Ms and IngaTinis in the Green Room (see above) were pretty awesome.

The SIS girls – definitely the cutest and most fun girls I met. Me: why do you have blue hair? SIS girl: why don’t you have blue hair?

That’s my feet getting a foot massage at the DrFirst’s booth. Serious heaven.

I noticed many black patented leather flats. Not too many flip flops, but if they work for you…

Standing room only in the Stage 2 Meaningful Use overflow meeting room. Cute boots for standing in.

Hot pumps on the escalator.

Today was full of sensory overload, with cute shoes, the Quipstar contest, and Stage 2 Meaningful Use news. Mr. H already provided a high level overview, so I won’t say more for now. I was seated in the overflow room and got to watch the presentation via video feed. I also attempted to attend the ONC Town Hall, but both the regular session and the overflow room were full by the time I arrived. Bummer.

Thanks to all the HIStalk sponsors who proudly displayed signs recognizing their HIStalk support, including Iatric, Billian’s, MEDSEEK, Access, GetWell Network, Trustwave, CareTech, and Cumberland. If you see one of the those signs, please tell the sponsors thanks for supporting us.

I am not a big complainer, but it seems the lines to get food and drink are crazy. My post-HIStalkapalooza body waited 15 minutes to get coffee this morning. I should have gotten a muffin because by the time I was ready to find lunch, the lines were horrendous. My friend and I opted for the wine food group for lunch because we wanted to catch up and didn’t have the 20 minutes to wait for $20 worth of bad food. Many thanks to the sponsor who took pity on me and gave me one of their leftover fruit cups.

Either I missed them or someone has finally convinced companies that if you are spending $100,000 and beyond on booth space, you can’t afford to have your staff checking their phones the whole time. I seriously saw very little of that going on today.

Friendliest booth guys today were either the FormFast folks (who gave me a hat) or JarDogs (whose sales guys were also very cute.)

Nicest change of pace: Carstens had classical music playing in their booth.

I appreciate sales folks who can give an elevator pitch in less than a minute. Especially good jobs by the staff at  Trustwave and Elsevier.

More to come…

ONC Announces Meaningful Use Stage 2 Proposed Rule Release

National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari announced Wednesday morning at the HIMSS conference that new proposed Meaningful Use requirements have been sent to the Federal Register, with publication expected Thursday morning.

Mostashari says ONC followed the guidance provided by the Health IT Standards and Policy Committees, as the new proposed regulations “stayed the course” as ONC “listened and we learned.” He said ONC tried to get the new regulations out weeks ago, but could not complete the work in time to avoid release during the HIMSS conference.

The broad themes to be addressed in the Notice of Proposed Rule Making for Stage 2 are:

• Increased emphasis on health information exchange.
• Increased emphasis on patient engagement.
• New requirements for hospital patient safety, specifically with regard to electronic medication administration records.
• Requirements involving tying clinical decision support to quality measures.
• A philosophical goal of flexibility and reducing provider and vendor burdens.

Specific issues are:

• The Direct protocol will be required.
• SNOMED will become the standard for encoding problem lists.
• Infobutton (i.e. the blue button initiative) will e expanded, with requirements that patients be able to view, download, and exchange their own information. The proposed legislation calls for 10% of patients to actually do this.
• While Stage 1 required theoretical information exchange capability in test mode, Stage 2 will require providers to exchange information “across organizational and vendor boundaries,” which also includes submission to public health agencies.
• Encryption and usability requirements will increase.
• Viewing of images will be supported as an optional item.
• Physicians in group practice will be allowed to submit their quality measures electronically as a group.
• Stage 1 will be extended for another year, though 2013 for those who first attest in 2011. Providers can then stay on Stage 2 for another two years.
• The last date to attest without penalties will be October 1, 2014.
• An increased emphasis will be placed on making referrals electronic.
• Electronic submission to cancer registries will be added as a menu item.

ONC announced its intentions to create a new certification called Certified EHR Technology that would replace existing forms of certification. This would begin with the 2014 reporting period. If EPs can meet Meaningful Use via exclusion, they will not need a CEHRT product.

Under CEHRT certification, which ONC prefers to be called 2014 Edition, the baseline requirements would be for a Base EHR that would include:

• A history and problem list.
• Clinical decision support capability.
• Provider order entry.
• Quality capture and data query.
• Exchange and integration capability.
• Privacy and security capabilities.

MU Core and MU Menu will contain additional levels.

Providers can meet the definition of Core EHR in any of three ways:

• By using a Complete EHR compliant with 2014 criteria.
• By using a combination of modules.
• By using a single EHR module.

ONC says it will post the draft document in Word format to its Web site. It will also encourage using electronic submission for the comment process.

From HIMSS 2/21/12

From Mr. H

You know you had good day when you thought it was about 10 at night, and you check your watch and find that it’s well after 1:00. I’ve never stayed until the end of HIStalkapalooza in years past and yet this time, I found new old friends that I just didn’t want to leave. I’ll probably forget all kinds of stuff since it’s late, but I’ll try to put some thoughts down.

Inga, Dr. Jayne, and I had our HIStalk sponsor lunch today, with a brief in-costume appearance. Our sponsors are magnificent, taking time from their very busy first day of HIMSS to spend time with us. Thanks to Dr. Travis of HIStalk Mobile for managing the event; Duke Hospital CIO Art Glasgow for speaking to our guests;  Tom Visotsky for helping out; and Micky Tripathi for dropping by as one of our favorite people. We appreciate the support of our sponsors and hope the event conveyed that fact to the folks who make all this possible.

HIStalkapalooza was just perfect. ESD did everything right and had a great group of ambassadors on site to welcome our guests. Ross Martin MD did an amazing opening number dressed as Elvis with lyrics customized for HIStalk –  Ross comes through for us every time and he was excellent in every way, from his rhinestone-studded Elvis costume to his great singing and dance moves. We had an Elvis impersonator, something I wasn’t sure I’d like, but he was definitely working the crowd and doing some great Elvis work up there. It was fun having e-Patient Dave there as the subject of one of Ross’s songs, and the duet featuring Ross and Elvis was really good.

The contests were great fun. I’ll let Inga fill in the details later, but the show was skillfully handled by the polished Greg Wilson of Salar and the beautiful Jennifer Lyle of Software Testing Solutions. Our new BFF Timur Tugberk helped out with the activities along with our judges (photos and details to follow). And of course, Jonathan Bush was endlessly entertaining with the HISsies awards – he’s been doing it for us for years and this was his best performance in my mind. I don’t think any description could do it justice.

The IngaTinis were seriously too good – those First bartenders concocted a mixture that was a little sweeter than I like, but prone to disappearing in seconds leaving an empty glass and an inner voice saying, “Don’t have another … these things are liquid crack.” I had two other folks try them and they just moaned their approval.

I didn’t have much to eat, but the prime rib was outstanding, the beer was cold, and the service from the First crew was really good even when it got slightly rowdy.

Thanks to everyone who came, with special recognition to the ladies who were wearing some amazing outfits and shoes and definitely working it. And thanks to ESD, especially Brittanie Begeman, who put unbelievable effort over many months into making this evening special for those present.

Here’s Inga’s footwear in a pic taken by me in the limo going to the sponsor lunch. She repeatedly emphasized that she had painted her toenails to match her jaunty scarf, while Dr. Jayne and I tried to seem moved by that knowledge.

The Palazzo shops area, near First.

One of the lovely ladies of ESD welcoming our guests.

Prime rib, nut brown ale, and a view overlooking the Strip and the Treasure Island fireworks and pirate show. Nice.

Dueling Elvi, with Ross Martin on the left. They were both good.

Jennifer and Timur with some of our contestants.

Judges on the left, Greg Wilson on the right, contestants in the middle.

The incomparable JB doing the HISsies.

The ESD folks taking a much-deserved bow.

Epic won a lot of the “good” HISsies awards. Thanks to Judy Faulkner for dropping by.

I’m sure we’ll have more, but it’s now 2:00 in the morning and I’m tired, so here’s a quick rundown of the exhibit hall.

• I was exhausted trying to swing by all the booths, only to find that there’s a downstairs. Seriously. So-called Hall G (the only place your free food coupon was good for) is downstairs off the main level, filled with mostly small or oddball booths and other non-exhibit items. I’m thinking that anyone who bought a big space down there got a bad deal.
• Iatric Systems had the coolest crowd draw – a trick pool guy with a full-sized table.
• Omnicell had cappucino.
• Versus had the perfect sized, done in a really nice green.
• The HipLink folks were wearing cool racing shirts.
• Several booths had every rep screwing around with their smart phones and never looking up even when someone stopped right in front of them (Vital was one I noticed only three minutes after the doors opened.) I’d confiscate their gadgetry if it were me.
• DrFirst was doing their superhero photos and caricatures.
• Covisint had bean bag chairs in their theater.
• Enovate had the same effect on me as in every other year – their cool ergonomic computer carts and arms compelled me to caress their wares.
• I’ll award two companies my “best booth performance of the day.” Optum had a huge space and had one rep whose name I should have got come out to masterfully strike up a conversation. One of the best demos ever was by Bonny of Aventura, who showed me their quick clinician logon/logoff. I highly recommend taking a look – it’s really cool, fast, and easy.
• Medicity’s booth was packed.  Nice.
• AT&T had a charging station for personal devices and was demonstrating their Managed Telehealth system that can be leased with a monthly fee.
• Cisco’s theater was packed.
• T-System was set up like an ED, with employees in scrubs.
• Passport Health had their booth crawl sign out.
• Quest /Care360 had their booth crawl sign out and a guy doing lasso tricks.
• Emdeon had cool purple shirts and a nice green color scheme.
• Allscripts had the biggest booth and sign that I’ve ever seen.
• Siemens had a mammoth booth as well.
• Epic had the usual fireplace, wacky sculptures, and throngs of people.
• GE Healthcare had a stations set up for Caradigm.
• NextGen had a nice open booth with real grass growing.
• Lawson had a cool coffee bar.
• Microsoft’s booth was packed.
• MEDecision had cool blue martinis and an sculpture. I saw Dr. Jayne later and she had visited it, of course.
• Merge had a honeycomb design that was fun.
• Vitalz had a full-sized race car.
• Medicomp was running their Quipstar game, which was amazing considering they programmed the game system themselves and had really cool player stations. We were early fans of Quippe last year and if you haven’t seen it, check it out on an iPad.
• I overheard good things about Intelligent Medical Objects from a customer who said they are rock solid in getting their ICD-9 releases out early and in being prepared for ICD-10 well ahead of time, which of course penalizes them with the delay.
• Alert, the Portugal-based vendor that seems to exhibit every year with few customers to show for it, had a graphic saying they had 2,926 sites live in Portugal, over 8,000 in Brazil, and 24 in the US.
• MyMedicalRecords was pouring champagne.
• Airwatch had a candy and apple display that was quite attractive. It’s nice to see healthy food in the hall.
• NTT DATA had a cool booth and a coffee bar.
• Tibro had a bicycle challenge, where you can ride a stationary bike.
• The State of Georgia had a booth and was giving away Georgia peanuts, sharing space with Georgia Tech and Greenway.
• Check out Modernsolid of Taiwan – cool carts.
• Salar had a very cool booth and lots of candies.
• Firehost was giving away decks of cards.
• JEMS Technology was demonstrating their mobile video solution in the Enovate booth. 
• SCC Soft Computing had a jet ski.
• Agfa Healthcare had the coolest coffee machine ever.
• Identity Finder told me about their product that uses patterns to locate PHI on publicly accessible servers.
• The guys from Perceptive Software showed me their iPhone that Steve Wozniak autographed in his recent visit there.
• The Advisory Board booth had some folks I know on hand.
• Billian’s had our sign out and was offering extra badge holders.
• PilotFish had a nice crowd for their interface engine despite a terrible location. They were giving away colorful fish stuffed animals.
• OnBase had the sports bar, but I was crushed to see that their outstanding magician has been replaced.
• Beacon Partners had our sign out and is conducting an ICD-10 survey.
• Dr. Nick was doing a demo in the Nuance booth.
• Epic touted its Lucy thumb drive PHR.
• McKesson had the usual dark blue/orange booth and, surprisingly, had about the same number of attendees talking to the Horizon people as with those from Paragon.
• SIS had our sign out.
• Access had our signs out. They promise they’re going to figure out a way to bring their Texas barbeque to New Orleans next year since I’ve been bugging them to do that for three years now (they have a competition barbeque team.)
• Cerner and Meditech were in Siberia after losing HIMSS points for dropping out for a few years
• Most brilliant marketing idea: Laserfiche offered chair massages, but had monitors mounted beneath the face cushion so you could watch a video while getting massaged. The massage was amazing. This is my #1 tip to check out, which Dr. Jayne didn’t need since when I told her about it, she said she’d already had one.

From Inga

I’m meeting my BFF Dr. Jayne for a pre-HIStalkapalooza cocktail, so I don’t have much time to do more than highlight the last day in pictures.

Dr. Jayne and Mr. H let me take their picture with HIIMSS President Steve Lieber (he’s the one in the middle.)

Elvis was alive and kicking last night at the opening session.

The only missing from this dancing Elvis was a pole.

This gentleman was calling home to tell his kids about the amazing giant dice decorations.

Opening keynote this morning was Twitter founder Biz Stone. But, not until 35 minutes of music, dancing and a rather dry welcome from a HIMSS board member (I missed her name.) Stone was smart and funny. I only Tweeted a couple times during his talk.

I was one of the ones crushing my way to the front of the line to get in the exhibit hall the moment the doors opened.

Merge brought another car.

I think she was a professional booth babe but wow – really tall and in really high heeled shoes.

I will be playing Quipstar at Medicomp’s booth tomorrow at 4:00 pm.  Come see me.

Bloggers meet-up. Dr. Travis is participating in one of these sessions at some point but Mr. H, Dr. Jayne, and I weren’t asked to participate.

Orchestrate was just one of the HIStalk sponsors promoting the HIStalk Booth Crawl with a sign. Thank you!

Hall G is downstairs and easy to miss but that is where you will find the Interoperability Showcase and a number of other special booths. The ceilings are definitely lower than in the upstairs hall and it feels a bit dungeon-like.  However, there were still plenty of people.

The longest line: Cafe Presse, where the caffeine-addicted stood in line for 15 minutes to get their fix.

HIStalkapalooza time!

From Dr. Jayne

HIMSS opening day – we wait for it each year, and it dawns pretty much the same as any other day, except this year it’s a day later. I was pleased to see the turnout at the opening reception Monday night – it seemed like a lot more people than last year and most of them were having a good time. Mr. H and Inga and I had a nice visit – after all, we only see each other once a year, so there’s a lot of catching up to do. I did feel a bit conspicuous standing there with the three of us just hanging out, but that’s the magic of being anonymous.

HIMSS always seems like a whirlwind, and it’s no different this year. What’s been different this year (so far) is meeting actual family physicians out in the wild – yes, they do exist at HIMSS. And I’m happy to report they were pretty fun, even introducing me to some kicky Belgian ale. You do have to love a beverage that has pink elephants on the label (and that was also served in accompanying pink elephant glasses.) Don’t get me wrong, they also ordered milk and Cookies, revealing their Midwestern roots.

What do informaticians do when they get together? Make fun of ICD-10. In honor of my collision with Judy Faulkner on Monday, one whipped out his homegrown iPhone app and coded my visit: W51: Striking against or bumped into by another person – unintentional. It was actually a pretty cool app, with twirling dials (think slot machine) that allows you to shake your phone and select codes a la Urbanspoon’s mobile app. Based on the wackiness of ICD-10, I may be better off using the app than actually trying to select codes rationally.

Your HIStalk crew got together again (this time, craftily disguised in our white coats) today for the HIStalk vendor. appreciation lunch. Since almost anything goes in Las Vegas, we didn’t get many odd looks as we swept into Fashion Show Mall. It’s great to see everyone together and we do really appreciate the support that makes it possible for us to do our HIStalk thing.

Tonight was HIStalkapalooza of course and a good time was had by all with Jonathan Bush delivering a stellar performance and many hot shoes to be seen. One winner was asked in the hotel elevator if she was Miss America, what with the beauty queen sash and all. A little disappointed that I did not see my secret crush Farzad, although several other Dr. Jayne crushes were in the house, including Evan in his polka-dot jacket.

More to come tomorrow after I get my beauty rest. These Louboutins are killing me.

From HIMSS 2/20/12

We’ll have posts tonight from me (Mr. H) and Dr. Jayne. Inga always sends hers late because she’s out socializing, so expect her recap sometime Tuesday. Our big events Tuesday are the sponsor lunch and HIStalkapalooza, so I’m sure we will have stuff to share.

We’ll be covering fewer routine vendor announcements for the next few days since we don’t really have time to chase them down. If we miss one that really is big news, let us know. Otherwise, I may do a summary this weekend after the conference is over.

Mr. H

From Jimbo: “Re: LAS taxi line. It was a 45-minute wait Monday afternoon.” It was a wait for me Sunday night as well. They have a lot of taxis, but they still can’t handle the passenger load. Not to mention that you can easily see your hotel from the airport, but you’ll spend around $20 to get there by the time the cabs add on the mandatory charge for picking you up at the airport and the $3.30 for the first 1/13th mile.

From I Know Nothing: “Re: Amagine. AMA spins it off to AT&T.” According to the draft announcement apparently set for a Tuesday release, AMA and AT&T will put the Amagine community portal on AT&T’s Healthcare Community Online, with AT&T owning the result.

From @Cascadia: “Re: HCA. Noticed that HCA is recruiting for an EHR director and it includes both Epic and Meditech.”  

From Rebecca: “Re: ICD-10. In response to your reader’s comments regarding ICD-10,  I also took away that the delay may only pertain to certain segments of the healthcare community, based on the following from HHS. The statement said that HHS would ‘initiate a process to postpone the date by which certain health care entities have to comply with [ICD-10].’ As HHS and CMS have yet to provide further clarification, I would recommend that the hospital and provider community stay the course in preparation of ICD-10.  (On a side note, shame on the government for making such a vague, open-ended and potentially financially-impactful statement without concrete direction to the healthcare community, seemingly just to kowtow to the AMA.)”

Here’s a shot I took this morning of the Venetian – Palazzo – convention center complex. HIMSS hung large banners out, but of equally massive size are those pitching David Spade and Blue Man Group.

Here’s a shot taken from the Venetian looking out to Las Vegas Boulevard. Inside, it’s a fake canal under a fake sky, women with fake breasts, and men with fake tans. Finally the exhibit hall isn’t the only place where things aren’t as they seem.

I took this picture for Inga in the Palazzo shops. I figure this guy’s a genius if he can get women to pay $1,200 for $10 worth of material turned into red-soled shoes. I admit that as a non-profit hospital guy, I felt creepy being surrounded by all this excess. We’re supposed to be following a selfless calling of taking care of patients, or at least that’s what they used to say before the government became such a big payer and made it attractive for big corporations to use healthcare as a profit center.

The exhibit hall will look perfect on Tuesday, but here’s how it looked Monday morning.

I hung out with Inga and Dr. Jayne at the opening reception. While it wasn’t anything to get excited about (bad beer choices, passable but cute Elvis impersonators, mostly a staging area to execute dinner plans) it wasn’t as bad as those in Chicago and Orlando, which were held in rooms that resembled airplane hangars without the charm. The band was better this year, which isn’t saying much given the usual bad lamestream cover bands HIMSS hires to get the straight-laced IT types gyrating slightly to the tired oldies. HIMSS ditched the drink ticket concept – it was open bar, so that’s a plus. We didn’t try any food so I can’t vouch for it, but I didn’t see or smell anything that called to me.

Remember that under this year’s odd Las Vegas HIMSS calendar, Monday this year was Sunday from years past – pre-conference workshops and the opening reception. The mainstream part of the conference starts Tuesday with the keynote speaker (Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, who doesn’t seem all that interesting on the surface.) Since Inga, Dr. Jayne, and I didn’t sign up for any of the extra-cost workshops Monday, we have nothing to report from those.

I confess that I usually get a little bit discouraged at the conferences since I’m reminded that we’re just tooling around anonymously and not accomplishing a whole lot compared to the folks actually moving and shaking. We may feel slightly good about what we do the other 51 weeks of the year, but this week, we’re bit players and sideliners. Still, we’ll do what we can.

The funniest moment: Inga and Dr. Jayne were talking about Epic’s Judy Faulkner on the way to the opening reception when Dr. Jayne ran into someone and swapped the usual apologies. Inga had to tell her it was Judy she had just collided with. What they were discussing is that Inga had seen Judy outside a session room and I said I was surprised she wasn’t surrounded by hangers-on. Last conference, Judy couldn’t hit the coffee urn or restroom without people from vendors you’ve never heard of trying to sweet-talk her into dealing with them. She was more polite than she could have been.

It looks as though the particulars about Meaningful Use Stage 2 will be released in the ONC meetings scheduled for Wednesday morning. That is damned annoying: you know they’ve been finished for some time, so holding them back just to crow about them at HIMSS is unfortunate. Why couldn’t ONC have released them last week to give people time to study the proposed rules so they could discuss them intelligently this week? ONC is going to hijack all of the topics and issues being discussed at the conference by people who have spent a lot of time and money to be here and turn it into a test of who can make an Excel worksheet the fastest. That’s a shame. It’s not like the government doesn’t already hog more than its share of the healthcare IT spotlight.

Someone brought up a very good point to me about why it’s so weird about having HIMSS in Las Vegas. In every other city, HIMSS takes the place over. You see the same comforting faces that you see every year. In Las Vegas, we’re still outnumbered by the regular tourists, many of whom are bizarre, annoying, and indifferent to the conference as is typical in Las Vegas. Part of the conference draw is that attendees get to feel very special, insular, and collegial. I’m not sure we’re getting that here. On the other hand, the skirts are shorter than you can possibly imagine.

I finally figured out what I really dislike about Las Vegas. It’s the restaurants. I keep hearing locals bragging on the great restaurants here, but they are the antithesis of great restaurants. The are upscale mall food courts owned by faceless corporations, run by faceless corporate chefs determined to orchestrate the cookie cutter experience to the maximum wallet-extracting extent possible and to kill off any independent restaurants  that might cook from the heart rather than the pocketbook. The big-name chefs set foot on the premises only long enough for a quick photo op and to load up their pockets with culinary hush money to pretend that they’re really involved and proud of the end result (surely you didn’t think Bobby Flay or Wolfgang Puck would lower themselves to actually cook in restaurants bearing their names.) The food is the kind of stuff that unsophisticated bus-tripping Midwesterners crave and brag about to those left at home – mammoth and overpriced hamburgers, expensive hunks of steak with little more creativity applied than to put them on the fire, and dumbed-down ethnic food that isn’t too challenging for the casino crowd. There is minimal farm-to-table or local cuisine because, after all, we’re smack dab in the middle of a desert where the only key food source is what comes in from more hospitable climes via the airport. If there are great Las Vegas restaurants – and I’m thinking there aren’t — I’d wager that they aren’t found in Strip hotels. Las Vegas may have slightly better chains than Cheesecake Factory and Applebee’s, but they are still soulless corporate outposts that resemble a real, creative, chef-owned restaurant only superficially.

Speaking of restaurants, HIMSS included a $10 certificate for food Tuesday, good in the exhibit hall. A nice gesture, even if $10 doesn’t get you much from union-run food service concession stands.

The Madison, WI couple competing in The Amazing Race, the female half of which works for Epic, placed first in Sunday night’s episode.

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Dr. Jayne

As I was on my way to the airport to catch my flight to HIMSS, I made one last pass by the mailbox to see if there were any cool marketing materials and I’m glad I did. The first one was a kicky orange band-aid cutout (I probably should call it an adhesive bandage so the trademark police don’t come calling) from Aventura. Even better was the tagline when I flipped it over:

Needless to say, it made my day and I was grateful for a good chuckle.

I’m glad I found the other mailing from ICA because it offers a chance to win $2,000 for your local community food bank. I’ll definitely be stopping by for that contest, right after I drop off my shoes at one of the Soles4Soles collection points at ESD (booth 4616), HealthPort (252), DrFirst (5456), or Gnax Health (2875).

I spent most of the flight out planning my activities for the next few days – I’m still trying to sort out the best way to fit in all the sessions I want to catch with all the exhibitors I want to see. Plus, I need to make sure to leave some time to try to catch up with my bow tie-clad crush, Farzad Mostashari. I’m grateful for HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS12 which gave me a starting place from which to plot my escapades.

Like many of you, my favorite part of HIMSS is networking. I’m looking forward to attending a couple of vendor events and some physician gatherings as well as catching up with old friends. I’ll be stalking the exhibit hall with a couple of my CMIO buddies and will be reporting on their reactions throughout the week. One of them is a first timer, so I can’t wait to see what he thinks.

Networking is particularly fun when you’re an anonymous semi-celebrity. I recently shared a drink with my trusty sidekick Bianca Biller and another long-time colleague who was lamenting how hard it is to keep up with all the industry gossip. The conversation turned to HIStalk, of course, and it was all I could do to not giggle. I’ll be non-competitively participating in the HIStalk Booth Crawl  so I’m sure I’ll have to suppress more than one giggle over the next few days. Good luck to all our readers competing for the chance to win one of 55 iPads. And remember – if you can’t find the answer, make up something funny to keep Mr. H entertained as he stays up ‘till the wee hours of the night handling your entries.

We’ll be on e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter this week and looking forward to hearing from our readers. Got a picture of the best giveaways, coolest booths, or craziest outfits? E-mail me.

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Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

From HIMSS 02/19/12

Mr. H

I got into Las Vegas late, so I don’t have much to add to Inga’s writeup below, except:

• The engineer who designed the airport baggage carousels here must have hated people and/or their luggage. The conveyor shoots the bags forcefully up at an angle, ensuring that they tumble out of control as they careen over other bags and sometimes off the carousel entirely. The belt was littered with luggage parts that had been stripped off by the force.
• Thanks to the McKesson Horizon sales guy who elbowed me out of the way at the carousel, then slung his bag carelessly and darned near took my kneecap off it without so much as a “sorry.” Good luck moving Horizon, jerk.
• There’s a casino between Harrah’s and the Venetian that has $1 Michelob. It’s not my favorite beer, or at least hasn’t been until now. They have $1.99 foot-long hot dogs if you are in need of unmentionable animal parts formed into torpedoes of nutritional death.
• Las Vegas is my least favorite city in the world, full of loud drunks, long hotel check-in lines, and sensory overload. It’s like Orlando except with obnoxious adults instead of obnoxious kids.
• It’s 1:30 in the morning as I write this (4:30 for bodies on Eastern time) and the band is still playing loud outside in somewhat cool weather. I think I actually like that.

Inga

Welcome to Las Vegas and HIMSS12. Today is Sunday and exhibitors are moving in, but the masses have yet to descend on sin city. However, I arrived Saturday afternoon, just in time to attend World Wide Technology’s big bash.

I don’t know the official attendance for the party, but I understand the WWT folks were expecting 600. Based on the line to get into the party, I would guess they had far more than that. WWT provides system integration services primary to the federal government, but also has a rapidly expanding commercial health segment. As soon as I entered the main party area, I observed WWT’s prominently displayed displayed banner promoting their support of HIStalk – very cool, indeed. Thank you to WWT’s Mike Francis, who I happened to meet at the bar, for giving me a thorough overview of the company.  The crowd seemed to be having a great time eating great sushi and of course, drinking plenty of adult beverages. I was exhausted and didn’t stay too long, but I am sure the party went on into the wee hours.

   

I’ve never had the chance to see any big trade show behind the scenes during setup, so when a friend offered a loaner badge, I jumped at the chance. Basically the exhibit floor was chaos, with fork lifts, crates, boxes, and workers scrambling to construct massive booths. Knowing that by Tuesday afternoon the floor will be pristine makes the setup all the more an amazing sight to see.

I found the giant shoes at the Cosmopolitan. OMG this one was beautiful and I need one as yard art.

I also happened on First, the site of Tuesday night’s HIStalkapalooza. Giddy thinking of how much fun that evening will be.

Vegas offers a great opportunity to see all sorts of, um, fashion. Though I have seen lots of hot outfits, I’ve observed plenty that have left me asking, “what were they thinking?” I assume this laptop-toting gentleman in the Apixio shirt was a HIMSS attendee. I thought it was highly unfortunate that he failed to remove the jean size sticker off his right leg.

Gorgeous weather today, if not a little bit cool and windy. More meaty updates tomorrow.

E-mail Inga.

Monday Morning Update 2/20/12

From Deborah Kohn: “Re: ICD-10. I’m one of those scheduled to speak on ICD-10 at HIMSS! However, my topic is more about understanding the plethora of HIT tools that can used not only for the next round of compliance dates, but even if ICD-10 gets bumped off the US landscape. So I don’t bore the audience with OS upgrade analogies, I was going to promenade in and flaunt my cute shoes. Now I have to think about how to inspire a session room of one or two souls since Mr. HIStalk predicts it will be seriously empty.” I’ll try to help out by pitching the cute shoes, which always gets the attention of a loyal core of readers.

Listening: new from Heartless Bastards, female-led bluesy roots rock from Austin, TX that can sound like everything from The Pretenders to a restrained, better voiced, and sultrier Janis Joplin. It’s basically all about Erika Wennestrom, who sings, plays, and writes with aplomb. I mentioned them in August, but I feel justified in doing it again since I’ll predict that the new album will make them stars. They actually play real music. I’m with Dave Grohl – learn to play an instrument, sing from the heart, and forget the computers.

Inga, Dr. Jayne, and I will be posting daily from HIMSS, so this is my attempt to clear out my inbox before then. Expect lengthy posts, lots of pictures, and quite a few reader comments for most of next week as we try to grasp and convey the enormity that is the HIMSS conference. If you want to help, we can use more eyes and ears since we can’t be everywhere at once.

My timely Time Capsule editorial this week from five years ago: Despite Your Resolutions, I Know What You’ll Be Doing at HIMSS. Example: “Thrust your chest out proudly, knowing that booth people will pretend to be impressed with your title, your employer, and your town, even though they are silently sniggering at all three and looking over your shoulder for a better prospect or an incognito competitor who might hire them.”

We rolled over the 5 millionth HIStalk visitor Friday morning at 6:54 a.m. Eastern time, which Inga and I both happened to see live by pure coincidence. A reader on an iPad from Boise, ID put us over the hump. There were almost 100 readers on at that odd time of day, from places like New York City; Atlanta; Washington DC; England; Ottawa; Pittsburgh; Madison; and Kirchheim, Germany. Thanks for contributing to that number, which I still can’t quite comprehend given that my view HIStalk is just an ever-hungry blank screen in my computer / exercise room.

GE recognizes the inconvenience to these small practices that relied upon Advance, which is why GE guarantees a competitive price of $650 per provider per month for the first two years of the agreement. True, after that period, pricing is set at the discretion of the VARs but we’ve spoken with them all and have consensus that MJOG’s cited $1500 is remarkably high and well above what the going rate would settle at.

1. Automatically set up a Conference Personalizer membership-type site for every registered attendee, where you can log on with your conference confirmation number.
2. Allow vendors to target their announcements and invitations to be sent to the individual member’s site. Like e-mail, the attendee can simply delete them to make them go away.
3. Provide the capability for events to be accepted and turned into a printable / downloadable conference calendar, also RSVP’ing automatically to the sponsor of the events.
4. Allow attendees to connect with each other to whatever degree they choose in a LinkedIn-type closed message model.

Sponsor Updates

• First Databank will announce Monday the release a new alert management solution, FDB AlertSpace, that addresses alert fatigue. It allows users to customize CPOE alerts, the great majority of which are overridden during order entry, and to share common alert settings with other facilities. They will be demonstrating it at the HIMSS conference.
• Healthcare Clinical Informatics is offering a free Webinar, Making Molehills out of Mountains: EMR Optimization and Clinical Adoption, on Wednesday, March 7.

Las Vegas weather: very pleasant and sunny all week after a slightly cooler Sunday and Monday, with highs in the 60s to low 70s, lows in the mid 40s. If you are headed out, safe travels. If not, we’ll tell you what’s happening there.

E-mail Mr. H.

Dr. Sam 2/17/12

Confusion and Clarifications on Practicing Medicine in "Real Time"

It has often been said, and oft written ( by people like me) that we have entered the age of the practice of medicine in "real time." In fact, I think I may have coined the term "Real Time Medicine" about 10 years ago. At least I registered a domain name using the term about six or seven years ago, which must mean something.

The term seemed to me at the time to mean some super form of "now." Not the "now" of today, or this morning, or in the next ten minutes, but rather the instant of simultaneity – when data appeared at its point of generation  and simultaneously arrived at whatever device I use to receive it.

Being inherently paranoid with respect to all matters even remotely in the domain of influence of anyone who belongs to a state or national bar association (and having experienced more than one brush with the legal system,) I immediately began to ponder the medical legal consequences of medical decision-making in the super-now. Just how quickly was I supposed to advise Mrs. Epstein that she should alter her insulin dose when I just saw that she had a markedly elevated fasting blood glucose level?

A reasonable response would seem to include such factors as the likelihood of anything happening to Mrs. Epstein between the time I learned of her hyperglycemia and when I was able to call her, the severity of importance of my current activities (such as being in
the middle of conducting a cardiac resuscitation,) and my ability to actually reach her.

A malpractice attorney however, may be more likely to view the parameters of reasonability around a perceived degree of danger to Mrs. Epstein with each passing moment, my clear irresponsibility in delaying contacting her for any reason (certainly I could have yelled out for someone to have my office call Mrs. Epstein  as I was injecting intracardiac epinephrine,) and the potential impact of my irresponsibility on the attorney’s ability to pay off the condo in Park City.*

Ergo: Einstein was right. Time is relative. QED.

"How relative?" you may ask.

This is another subject that keeps me up at night.

Since I may have coined a term involving, by implication, the super-now, I should at least know what "now" is. Considering that today’s speediest transistors can switch faster than one thousandth of a billionth of a second, that the second has been physically divided by laser strobe technology into increments of 250 billionths of a billionth of a second, and that one meter is now measured as the distance light travels in a vacuum in  1/299,792,458th of a second, I have no idea at all of what "now" actually means. Whatever "now" is,  it’s already gone.

If we ever have peco-lawyers, we are all in a lot of trouble.

If I am ever sued on an issue of how long I took to respond to a digital message, my plan is to call in a theoretical physicist, like Paul Davies from Arizona State University, or philosopher Craig Callender from the University of California-San Diego, and others who are capable of articulating a very strong argument that time does not exist at all – an argument which is particularly appealing since it would mean that a lot of lawyers would owe a lot of people a lot of money in refunds.

To add to my personal confusion on these matters, we are getting our information in something called cyberspace. This is apparently someplace in which we all spend time without ever actually being in it. I think it’s someplace where time has no past or future. This may explain why many teenagers emerge from it effectively brain dead.

I can’t  help but wonder what the eminent diagnosticians of the past would think of the practice of medicine in cyberspace. I remember studying the writings of Sir Zachary Cope who, it seemed to me, would have been able to determine more about an acute abdomen from across the room than I could at the bedside. I remember actually tapping on someone’s chest to try to gauge the level of any fluid that might be present in the chest cavity. Today, I would remotely place an electronic order for a chest X-ray and receive an answer from New Delhi. So much for the laying on of hands.

I have been giving myself credit for coming up with the term "Real Time Medicine" for close to a decade, but honesty dictates that I cannot claim in good conscious to understand what I meant – or even claim to understand what I though I was describing. Even if someone else came up with the term at the same instant I did, it would apparently  depend upon how far apart we were physically at the time and the speed at which we were each moving relative to each other to know who had the original thought. If anyone reading this thinks they came up with the concept before me, please contact me and we’ll go to an astrophysicist together to get it worked out.

* (Possible moment of cynicism suggesting a need to apologize – but my heart would just not be in it)

Samuel R. Bierstock, MD, BSEE is the founder and president of Champions in Healthcare, LLC, a strategic consulting firm specializing in clinical information system implementation and healthcare IT business strategies.

News 2/17/12

Top News

HHS announces that the October 1, 2013 compliance date for provider use of ICD-10 diagnosis codes will be pushed back to an unspecified date.

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Reader Comments

From Imelda: “Re: Soles4Souls. Your shoe drive inspired me to clean out my closet. I promise to bring at least three pairs to donate. Where do I need to take them?” Awesome! You can bring your donation of any style of gently used shoes to the exhibit floor and drop them off at ESD (booth 4616), HealthPort (252), DrFirst (5456), or Gnax Health (2875). We’ll also have a drop-off box at HIStalkapalooza for those who received an invitation for it.

From Fred Gailey: “Re: your interview. I enjoyed the interview with you in the Dodge Communications blog. You were so articulate. You and the HIStalk gang are the most famous anonymous people I know.” Thanks. I like that Fred feels he knows me.

 

From Tom: “Re: ICD-10 delay. I thought you might get a chuckle from this web page announcing the delay today.” Bowing to AMA pressure and exhibiting typical federal government indecisiveness (and possibly keeping a close eye on the re-electability of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s boss in the White House) HHS decides yet again to delay ICD-10 like it did HIPAA and just about every other piece of legislation that big-donor provider groups might squawk about, using patients as their human shield of excuses. It wasn’t even due to kick in until almost 20 months from now, meaning it will probably be ICD-12 or 13 if and when the feds ever pull the trigger. We don’t want to rush into ICD-10, though – it’s only been out for 20 years. ICD-10 is cumbersome, but it won’t get less so with a delay, so if it sucks, let’s just say we’re never going to do it and move on to something else. As is often the case with federal programs these days, the responsible people (those who prepared for the change instead of ignoring it) get the shaft.

From RJ: “Re: ICD-10 delay. It should be noted that HHS posted an announcement last evening with an emphasis on its commitment to the rulemaking process. They reissued the release this morning, but removed all references to the rulemaking process. Here are the versions.” I put the two versions sent over by RJ into Word and kicked out the changes. HHS removed everything referencing rulemaking and took Sebelius’s name out of the headline. Interesting.

From Bob: “Re: Booth Crawl. I can’t make it to HIMSS this year. Can I participate virtually by reviewing the vendor web sites and submitting an entry form online?” Inga and I didn’t write many rules since we made the whole thing up in about 15 minutes, so checking the rather slim rulebook finds no requirement that you actually visit the booths – you only have to answer the questions. I would be surprised if the participating companies chose questions with answers that can be easily found online, but I also admit that I haven’t actually looked. Since you do not need to be present to win, we would have no way to check anyway, so good luck!

From Dave: “Re: shoes. Saw these, thought of Inga.” Now you’ve got Shirley Temple’s At the Codfish Ball stuck in my head: “Come along and follow me, to the bottom of the sea …”

From Mark: “Re: NIST. Isn’t this a few years late?” The National Institute of Standards and Technology asks EHR vendors to provide their products to help it develop usability standards, a process it estimates will take a year to complete. Vendors can sign up through March 15. My first thought was that it would not be in a vendor’s best interest to participate, but I reconsidered … it’s probably not a bad idea to connect with the NIST folks (and ONC indirectly) and make sure they understand your particular point of view.

From Curmudgeon: “Re: ICD-10 spleen-venting. What timing. Clarification best come before the flock gathers in Las Vegas or confusion will reign. The review process better not be a Meaningful Use-esque five-act drama. CIOs know this will happen and progress must continue, but now there’s a reason for organization management to pull the old ‘well wait and see’ attitude, shorting funding, staff and time. Dr. Madara’s ‘find another method!’ has to be the mindblower of the century. I hear he wants to appear at HIMSS, but is uncertain if his horse and buggy will be there in time. There are quality reasons, information reasons and better care reasons to do ICD-10. The excuse that the rest of the world doing it is shouldn’t be the reason for the US to do it. The reason should be that the rest of the world found it smart to do it! Unless we know something they don’t. Safe travel to all going to the Strip and thanks to all who stay behind keeping the home chips and bytes burning.”

From History Buffy: “Re: previous HIMSS conferences. I ran across this 2007 document by the HIMSS Legacy Workgroup (never heard of them) that attempted to document the history of HIMSS. It has the location, number of attendees, exhibitors, etc. for all the conferences.” Pretty cool. The first conference was in 1962 in Baltimore, when the precursor of HIMSS (Hospital Management Systems Society) had all of 53 members. Conference attendance didn’t crack 10,000 until San Antonio in 1995, when HIMSS had 5,534 members.

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Got HIStalk Practice? If not, here is what you missed over the last week: HIT adoption by US physicians is higher than in other advanced nations. CMS launches a Web page dedicated to clinical quality measures. HHS introduces a $9.1 million loan repayment program to encourage medical students to practice primary care in underserved areas. AAFP’s TransforMED publishes a toolkit for PCMH implementations. Culbert Healthcare’s Brad Boyd offers advice for extending IT to community practices. Readership on HIStalk Practice continues to climb – thank you, readers. For you non-readers, that means your colleagues and competitors are staying one step ahead of you, so you had best get on the HIStalk Practice bandwagon.

The fun folks at World Wide Technology are hosting a party in Las Vegas Saturday night and that’s where you’ll find me. They are so proud of their HIStalk sponsorship that they created a special banner to display at the event. How cool is that? Party pics to follow.

Charles Babbage posted a comment this week regarding my Dodge Communications interview, which included my confession that I was often star-struck by big-name CIOs and vendor CEOs. From Charles’ original comment:

This Inga quote illustrates how we have moved the focus of HIT from benefiting patients to selling products and glorifying salesmen and their leaders. The people Inga calls the ‘Rock Stars’ of HIT should be the CMIOs and clinicians who make the systems work to help patients and improve healthcare.

Charles added that he adores me, so my delicate ego was not too terribly crushed. In a follow-up e-mail exchange, Charles added:

Thanks also for understanding that the comment is NOT directed at you, but at the unfortunate values that HIMSS perpetuates by idolizing people who sell software that has balkanized health IT services, requires four or more years to implement, achieves usability standards of the early-to-mid 1990s, connects only to itself, and too often obscures information rather than presenting it in ways that help clinicians. And it does not help either clinicians or patient safety that the software too often takes 15 clicks to find information that should be contiguous on the same screen. Now, that does not make the vendors evil, and most do want to help healthcare if they can make money by selling their goods — and there ain’t nothing wrong with that. BTW, after today’s post, I got a slew of invites to meetings, breakfasts, etc. for only $89 each.

The DrFirst folks are offering another way for HIStalk readers to win an iPad. Stop by their booth (#5456) on Tuesday, mention their HIStalk contest, and get your picture taken with their HIT super hero Doctor Defender while doing something funny, creative, or otherwise noteworthy. The winning picture will be displayed and announced at HIStalkapalooza Tuesday night.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Healthcare Clinical Informatics (HCI.) The Jacksonville, FL company provides EMR implementation talent, helping healthcare organizations with all phases of the implementation lifecycle, making sure that workflow is integrated and ROI is delivered. The company is growing like gangbusters, having hired 70 employees in 2011 and on track to bring on another 150 this year. HCI also supports the growing UK healthcare IT market from its offices in South Wales, partnering with a number of NHS Trusts. Its clients include Adventist Health System, Parkland, and Tenet. They can help whether you need consulting help or permanent placements. I always like to check out the executive roster and I found a couple of highly experienced folks I know: CIO Sean O’Rourke (he used to be CIO at UPMC) and VP of Optimization and Clinical Adoption Marcy Stoots (she ran Baycare’s implementation.) The HCI folks are excited about being connected with HIStalk and I appreciate their support. Thanks to Healthcare Clinical Informatics.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

HIMSS buys the mHealth Summit conference and exhibition after helping produce it this past December. The conference was formerly run by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. HIMSS also hires the conference director, Richard Scarfo, as a VP of vendor events. This year’s event will be held December 3-5 in Washington DC.

athenahealth announces Q4 numbers: revenue up 33%, EPS $0.15 vs. $0.21. Excluding special items, the company’s earnings of $0.26 exceed analysts’ expectations of $0.24, sending shares up 3% early in after-hours trading Thursday.

Merge Healthcare announces Q4 numbers: revenue up 39%, adjusted EPS of $0.19 vs. $0.10, beating estimates of $0.13. Revenue fell short of expectations.

Allscripts announces Q4 numbers: revenue up 15%, adjusted EPS $0.25 vs. –$0.03, meeting estimates. Shares are down 6% in early Thursday after-hours trading as its full-year profit forecast fell short of expectations. The company also announces an expansion of its operations in India, with more than 300 positions to be filled there by the end of the year.

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Sales

Family HealthCare Center (ND) contracts with Intelligent InSites to provide RTLS solutions for tracking, managing, and displaying the real-time location and status of patients, staff, and equipment.

PeaceHealth’s Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend (OR) expands its utilization of the Versus Technology RTLS platform.

Health Management Associates signs an exclusive three-year technology agreement for McKesson’s pharmacy automation suite.

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People

Medical scribe services vendor ProScribe hires Suzy Wier Thorby as SVP of corporate development. The former ED nurse co-founded T-System along with two physicians in 1996.

First Choice Professionals names Carol Selvey as VP of strategy and business development. She was previously with Iatric Systems.

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Announcements and Implementations

Johns Hopkins Health System becomes the 100th organization to integrate Hyland Software’s OnBase ECM with Epic’s EMR. On an unrelated note, I wonder if OnBase is sticking with their sports bar-themed booth again this year or going for something new?

GetWellNetwork announces the availability of its interactive patient care solution for the iPad.

Aventura introduces the ability to auto-populate patient records on the screen as providers move from room to room.

Awarepoint’s RTLS solution is rolled out by The Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust in the UK in what the company says is the largest implementation of its kind in the world.

The Premier healthcare alliance will use data mapping from Clinical Architecture to standardize and normalize performance measurement across its 2,500 hospitals.

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Government and Politics

CDC announces a new national system for tracking the use of antibiotics in hospitals, allowing hospitals to compare themselves with others. CDC says there’s not much work for hospitals as long as their pharmacy system supports the AU (Antimicrobial Use) Initiative. I finally tracked down a list of that software here and the only major inpatient pharmacy system on it is Epic’s.

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Technology

A group convened by the West Wireless Health Institute to advocate cheaper, better wireless network infrastructure in hospitals completes its first milestone in creating a medical-grade wireless open framework. The architecture, which the group says can be incorporated in the same manner as electricity and plumbing, has been rolled out in several hospitals, including El Camino Hospital (CA) and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CA).

Former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, annoyed after his surgery to find that providers expected him to carry his own diagnostic images on CD, launches CareZone, a private space for families to store reference and contact information and to communicate via a Facebook-type application. The first year is free for signups before March 17, then it’s $180 per year.

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Other

If you are traveling to HIMSS this week, you will likely rely heavily on your smart phone to stay connected, either to family and co-workers back home or perhaps to schedule an important post-exhibitor floor “meeting” at one of the many Venetian bars. As you keep a firm hand on your phone, it could be a good time to ask yourself if you suffer from nomophobia, the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. This study suggests that two-thirds of adults suffer from the condition, and though it is generally worse for women and younger adults, one-third of all adults over the age of 55 are also afflicted.

Epic employee Rachel Brown and her husband Dave are competing this week in The Amazing Race TV show. He’s a military science instructor recently back from deployment in Iraq, where he was an intelligence officer and a Black Hawk helicopter pilot.

Queen of the Valley Medical Center (CA) is the latest of several hospitals forced to admit that its patient records were freely available to any search engine-savvy Internet user due to incorrect server security settings.

There’s a rumor that Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements may be issued Friday, just in time for high-fiving and hastily convened strategy discussions at HIMSS.

And speaking of HIMSS, imagine the disappointment of all those companies who built much of their exhibit hall presence around pitching ICD-10 services and products, only to have HHS rain on their parade by putting ICD-10 in limbo. Or maybe worst of all is if you’re scheduled to speak on ICD-10 at HIMSS, with the usual urgency of how providers need to take it seriously and move quickly starting yesterday to comply with the 2013 date (like that $89 breakfast I was fussing about.) Those session rooms are going to be seriously empty.

Weird News Andy opines that “ya gets what ya pays for” in this Las Vegas story. We’ve mentioned before the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, whose motto is “Taste Worth Dying For” as nurse-uniformed waitresses (above) serve mammoth burgers with calorie counts up to 8,000 (free if you weigh over 350 pounds, and every customer must wear a hospital gown). A patron has a heart attack while eating a modest 6,000 calorie version, wheeled out sweating and shaking by ambulance workers as giggling tourists snap photos. The restaurant’s  menu is a hoot, offering lard-cooked fries, no-filter cigarettes, pure cream milkshakes with optional vodka, and for those who “like it in the can,” 24-ounce cans of PBR and Miller. Book your HIMSS executive dinners now since after this news (I immediately suspected publicity stunt, but the hospital verified) the place is probably packed.

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Sponsor Updates

• Health Language announces a proof of concept collaboration project with Clinithink Ltd, a NLP specialist organization.
• Tanner Health System (GA), South County Hospital Healthcare System (RI), and Cottage Health System (CA) select Greenway’s PrimeSUITE EHR.
• Ministry Health Care (MN) teams with Thomas Reuters to develop a Meaningful Use quality manager solution.
• Ingenious Med introduces Imagine, a custom business intelligence and data analysis solution.
• ICA launches ICAetc, a free and open forum for software vendors to test the interoperability of their programs.
• ICA augments its ICA CareAlign solution with Emdeon Clinician for lab order and results distribution and electronic prescribing.
• MEDSEEK says that more than 100 hospitals selected its strategic patient engagement software suite in 2011.
• Wolters Kluwer Health introduces Facts & Comparisons eAnswers Mobile, allowing smart phone users find answers to drug information questions.
• DuPage Medical Group (IL) adds Merge Healthcare’s iConnect Access and Merge Eye Care suite to create an enterprise-wide imaging platform for its 330 physicians.
• Humana signs an agreement with NextGen to participate in its Medical Home EHR Rewards Program, which provides financial assistance to physicians purchasing EMRs.
• Ridgeview Medical Center selects Allscripts EHR/PM and the Allscripts Community Record powered by dbMotion.
• Vocera Communications introduces Vocera Connect for Cisco wireless IP phones and smart phones.
• T-System announces its plans for the HIMSS conference, including its participation in the HIStalk Booth Crawl.

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EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

Mr. H mentioned last week that he doesn’t pay much attention to pre-HIMSS marketing mailings. I, on the other hand, am a sucker for advertising. Those of you not registered for HIMSS may or may not be receiving some of these – apparently advertisers are using both this year’s mailing list as well as last year’s.

Having changed both mailing and e-mail addresses during the last 12 months, I’m receiving all sorts of marketing materials in all four locations. The funny thing, though, is there’s no overlap. I’m not receiving the same e-mails at both addresses or the same snail mail either. I don’t know if HIMSS makes exhibitors pay for attendee mailing lists, but I’m guessing that either some are too cheap to get the updated list or too slacker-ish to update their mailing software.

For those of you not attending, I hope this brings a little bit of HIMSS to your doorstep so you don’t feel quite so left out. As you can guess, most of the next week’s posts will be about the big show. With that in mind, I bring you Dr. Jayne’s Marketing Hall of Fame / Hall of Shame. I’ll tell you what ads (of the literally eight-inch tall stack) caught my eye and which burned my retinas.

I liked Allied Telesis and their “Untold Stories of the EMR” headline with its steely-eyed surgeon and episode titles like “The Constipated Network,” “My Network is on Life Support,” and “Blame it on the Machine.” I’d give you a link to their site, but – oh yeah – they didn’t include a web address on the postcard. Seems like a pretty big oversight for a technology player advocating virtualized data storage in the cloud. And no, I’m not going to Google it for you.

Jeers to HealthPort and their bizarre comic book hero, AudaPro. With his bald pate and little glasses, he reminds me a bit of Benjamin Franklin on the cover picture. The internal picture, however, can only be described as highly creepy. What’s with the yellow trunks? Although someone certainly thinks a limited edition HealthPort comic book will entice visitors to the booth, I’d have gone with the IngaTinis.

Wolters Kluwer Health is apparently giving away a Rolex. Caught my eye, but I’d be more excited if they were giving away a pair of size 8 ½ Manolos. I doubt it’s this cool girly one I found on the website anyway. Probably some gigantic man-watch.

InteliChart sent a poker chip that can be exchanged for a Venetian casino chip (potentially worth up to $1,000,) so I might have to check that out.

Catching my eye (but in a bad way) was Healthcare Informatics Associates, who mailed a stiff plastic marketing piece that can’t be recycled. Good try with the playing card and poker chip theme, but your colors (white with light yellow outline on baby blue) made the text hard to read. I’m totally puzzled by the instruction to “peel away outer area” as I’m not sure why I’d want to turn an annoying plastic rectangle into an annoying jaggedly shaped piece of plastic.

Winning the “what am I thinking” category is Capsule with the vaguest wording ever: “See how our workflow focused solution features a patient-centered design that works with existing technologies and infrastructures and delivers a flexible and scalable solution that fits the way the nurse works.” Maybe I lost it somewhere in the run-on sentence, but from that text, I have no idea what they do or whether they’re selling hardware or software.

The most unusual piece I received was from TEKsystems, who sent this “pieceless puzzle” that was a nice spot of fun after spending the entire day completing staff performance evaluations. It’s a mouse pad cut with a seemingly unending incision, turning it into a puzzle with only one piece. It probably would have come together more quickly if I wasn’t trying to assemble it while watching a hilarious episode of Top Gear on Netflix where I couldn’t stop laughing as they inadvertently lit an RV on fire.

The last ad that caught my eye wasn’t even a HIMSS mailing but a one-page piece in the February issue of Health Data Management. NextGate carries the day with their headline, “When you exchange healthcare information, don’t gamble” and their excellent selection of sample patient names.

I hope to see all of you at HIMSS. For the rest of you keeping the home fires burning, thank you for all that you do to keep the systems up and the users happy. There’s always New Orleans in 2013.

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Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

Sebelius Announces ICD-10 Implementation Delay

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced that the October 1, 2013 date for covered entities to implement the ICD-10 disease classification system will be pushed back to an unspecified date.

She was quoted in the HHS news release as saying,

ICD-10 codes are important to many positive improvements in our health care system. We have heard from many in the provider community who have concerns about the administrative burdens they face in the years ahead.  We are committing to work through the rulemaking process, with the provider community, to reexamine the pace at which HHS and the nation implement these important improvements to our health care system.

ICD-10 was adopted by the World Health Organization in 1992 and is used by every industrialized nation other than the United States for morbidity reporting, limiting the ability of the US to use and contribute to global health studies and surveillance. The rule setting the October 1, 2013 implementation data was originally published in January 2009.

HHS says a new compliance date will be announced in future rules.

Update: HHS has pulled the announcement page down.

Update 2: HHS changed the date of the announcement to today’s date, which gave the page a new link here. We thought it was odd that an apparently new major announcement had yesterday’s date and wasn’t appearing on HHS’s home page. They have fixed that.

News 2/15/12

Top News

Acting CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner tells an AMA audience that she is committed to re-examining the pace at which ICD-10 is implemented in order to give providers more time to make the transition. She says her office will make a formal announcement about regulation changes within the next few days.

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Reader Comments

From Don Pablo: “Re: data breaches. I saw where you are not relaying the stolen laptop breaches since they have become commonplace. I used to work in financial services and watched for reports of breaches. This was my favorite site to check a couple of times a week. I bring it to your attention as not every breach is easily found.”Great site to check out, unless you are obsessively worried about your personal data getting into the wrong hands, because lots of organizations seem to be losing our data.

From WellHeeled: “HIStalkapalooza. I just want to be sure it is as black tie and glamorous as last year (so I pack the appropriate Red Carpet attire)…is that the case?” There may not be a red carpet this year, but readers have assured me they are packing their sequins, high heels, and more than one black tie. SmyrnaGirl, for example, tweeted that she is bringing her A game with these hot shoes.

 

From Lucky Jackson: “Best dressed at HIStalkapalooza. Tell me what I have to do to win one of Mr. H’s big prizes.” In the fashion categories, we have HIStalk King (best-dressed man), HIStalk Queen (best-dressed woman), Best Elvis Impersonator (based solely on attire, so choose your favorite young or old Elvis outfit and don’t worry about the singing), and Best Left-in-Vegas Attire (think showgirl or over-the-top glitz; Mr. H is hoping for a lot of showgirls.) If you want to be in the running for the fashion or the shoe contests, arrive early because our judges will be selecting finalists between 6:30 and 7:30 pm.

From Former CIO: “Re: booth crawl. I hope the sponsors will have the answers readily available in the booths. With 50+ answers to get in around 11 hours of booth time, there won’t be much time for sales pitches.” We’ve asked the sponsors to have their booth crew prepared with the answers. I expect some will just post the answer on their wall. As a refresher to the detailed instructions: (a) download the form here and print it off, (b) get your answers from the booths and Web pages listed; (c) post them to the online entry form by Wednesday evening at 7:00, and (d) watch HIStalk Wednesday evening to see if you won. At minimum, you get good exercise and flaunt a confident, purposeful stride as you move from one booth to the next on a Apple-seeking mission instead of just meandering around following the scent of some vendor’s freshly baked cookies. With luck (and the odds should be decent), you’ll pack home one of 55 iPads. And as I mentioned last time, I’m the one grading the entries, and if you miss a question or two, I’ll most likely be lenient because I really want you to have an iPad. I was indifferent to the device when I won mine at HIMSS last year, but it has totally replaced my iPod Touch for around-the-house stuff: checking the weather, looking at e-mail, doing a quick order on Amazon, and reading Kindle books.

From Elaine: “Re: HIMSS. Any word on a McKesson event? It would be fun to let loose a bit after hours.” I’ll be honest in saying that I don’t even open any of the HIMSS-related mail I get (sorry, companies who pay big bucks to send it) so I don’t know anything about their event. The only ones that have risen above the noise for me were from companies that contacted me directly: a cool-sounding Cerner event at the Bellagio (called me at work), a great-sounding Iatric Systems lunch (e-mailed), and and SCI Solutions get-together (sent to my Mr. HIStalk e-mail). I’ll make this offer: for companies throwing an event that’s open to anyone (and that includes vendor people, just to be clear) let me know and I’ll mention it here, as long as you’re OK with the possibility that gregarious HIStalk readers will overwhelm you with interest, which we have to re-learn every year with HIStalkapalooza. Everybody ought to have a party invitation or two, don’t you think?

From MJOG: “Re: GE Centricity Advance. Discontinued with no warning and very little time to transition. They are offering Centricity CPS, but at $1,500 it is too pricey for the small practices that used Advance. Even their own VARs can’t guarantee a transition within GE’s timeframe. Practices that went live with Advance in January 2012 have to pay in full for implementation of dead software. GE is really out of touch.” I think what you are seeing is what lots of people predicted: when EMR certification turned out to be too easy to achieve and everybody earned it, that left it up to the market to weed out those products and companies that have a less than a fully competitive position in the face of disruptive companies that are happy to sell hosted, easily implemented systems for a few hundred dollars per month. The MU carrot is forcing practices to choose their dance partners nearly simultaneously, so the consolidation writing is on the wall as the rich get richer. It’s painful for existing customers, but is both desirable and inevitable over the longer term. Maybe we should have a mandatory Y2K every 10 years to thin the herd.

From All Hat No Cattle: “Re: electronic problem lists. What do you think of this idea?” Reported in a JAMIA article, Brigham and Women’s sets up EHR alerts to prompt the physician to review the problem list if patient data in the EHR suggests that any of 17 specific conditions (asthma, hypertension, diabetes, etc.) might be present but undocumented. The alerts were accepted 41% of the time, more problems were documented, and interventions and quality improvement work could presumably be more specifically targeted. I like the idea only because it has the potential (although modest, I expect) to improve the care of individual patients, unlike the similar adverse drug event triggers that have always seemed to me to be a complete waste of time except as a learning tool that nobody ever seems to learn from. On the other hand, pestering docs with alerts that are not helpful almost 60% of the time indicates a need for algorithm refinement. That’s where these projects end a lot of the time – the available information just isn’t good enough to improve the hit rate.

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Thanks to Streamline Health, supporting HIStalk as a Platinum Sponsor. The Cincinnati, OH-based company offers the AccessAnyWare document management system, which supports hybrid document-electronic hospitals (which is the vast majority) by organizing their information to streamline processes and improve patient care. Its OpportunityAnyWare business analytics solution aggregates information from disparate systems so that users can perform data mining and collaboration using dashboards that can include an unlimited number of key performance indicators, metrics, and alerts. Its Patient Access solutions integrate document workflow related to referrals, pre-op documentation, and financial forms to eliminate delays and process barriers, accelerating the billing process and increasing employee productivity. They even have a solution (CharityWare) to manage the need-based financial assistance screening process. Before and after stats for several clients are here. The executive team has a ton of healthcare experience and the company’s chairman of the board is our old HIStalk friend Jon Phillips of Healthcare Growth Partners, who I interview once a year or so because his healthcare IT business predictions are uncanny (and it’s about time to do that again.) Thanks to Streamline Health for helping us do what we do.

I realized today that I have listed the exotic recipe for the IngaTinis to be served at next week’s event, but forgot to mention the other custom-created specialty cocktails that will be served (the bartenders at First are seriously legendary craftspeople of the alcoholic arts.) The Mr. H Incognito is a rum punch with ingredients that are, like its namesake, best left undisclosed. For you root beer fans – and you know who you are – the ESD Activation Sensation is a mixture of IBC root beer with whipped cream vodka (who knew?) with a brandied cherry garnish. And while I’m on the topic, I should repeat that we are ecstatic to host those lucky folks who received an invitation, but we regretfully cannot accommodate anyone who didn’t (guests, co-workers, hastily propositioned showgirls, etc.) You are welcome to swing by at 8:00 p.m. to see if no-shows have freed up space, but otherwise we’re packed to the rafters.

Thanks and welcome to HealthMEDX as a new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor. The Ozark, MO company offers an integrated clinical and financial system that covers all post-acute care settings: long-term care, home health, hospital, rehab, and Continuing Care Retirement Communities (if you’re a hospital person and think this doesn’t pertain to your organization, it definitely does – the comfortable lines between acute care hospitals and all these other important venues of care are getting blurrier by the minute.) When ACO-type arrangements put you on the hook to coordinate care with these other providers, solutions from HealthMEDX ensure that best practices are followed to meet regulatory requirements, reduce cost, reduce errors, and (pay attention here) reduce those hospital readmissions that come right out of your pocket. Every one of HHS’s favorite programs requires unheard-of levels of data-sharing and coordination to give patients coordinated care at the most cost-effective location. HealthMEDX has solutions running in more than 3,000 facilities and has earned CCHIT certification for Home Health and SNF in addition to ONC-ATCB modular certification for both hospitals and EPs. And lastly, if you’re thinking, “I know I’ve heard of HealthMEDX somewhere,” it’s the company that former McKesson Technology Solutions President Pam Pure joined as CEO right before Christmas. Thanks to HealthMEDX for supporting HIStalk.

Inga is interviewed by the folks from Dodge Communications, in which she downplays her role in HIStalk and makes me seem way more interesting and virtuous than I really am. Feeling uncharacteristically affectionate after reading it because she was so sweet in her comments, I wanted to have Valentine’s Day flowers delivered to her, but the florist reacted with a combination of a contemptuous laugh and and annoyed snort when I called up Tuesday morning and cheerfully asked if they could deliver that same day (I may offer her and Dr. Jayne a spa day at HIMSS instead.) Anyway, here’s a quote, which I can verify as accurate because I’ve hung out with her at HIMSS:

I have met quite a few people in HIT over the years and I love the opportunity to catch up with former co-workers and meet new people. I’m always on the look-out for HIT rock stars and always get excited when I see a big-name CIO or certain vendor CEOs. It’s totally a nerdy reaction and I have to remind myself to act cool and not like a 14-year-old who catches a glimpse of Justin Bieber. I also enjoy the exhibits. It’s fun to see what the buzz is and what new things vendors are promoting. I like seeing which vendors are over-the-top in terms of their marketing efforts and enjoy chatting with the smaller vendors assigned to small booths on the outer edges of the show floor. It’s a circus but I wouldn’t miss it.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Imprivata announces that it added 160 healthcare customers in 2011 and increased its healthcare revenue by 103%.

Lexmark’s Perceptive Software unit posts an operating loss of $4 million for 2011, although Q4 revenue grew 41% from a year ago to $31 million. Lexmark CEO Paul Rooke says the company acquired Perceptive for growth and is pleased with the numbers.

Lumeris, Highmark, Horizon BCBS NJ, and Independence BC sign an agreement to acquire NaviNet, which offers a real-time communication network for physicians, hospitals, and health insurers.

Medicity will announce Wednesday that 2011 was its busiest year ever, with 43 contracts signed (22 by new customers, 21 by existing customers expanding their use.)

GE Healthcare and Microsoft announce the name of their new joint venture as Caradigm, also announcing company executives and a board of directors comprised of company insiders. We cited a Geekwire article on February 3 speculating that Caradigm would be the name. The companies confirm that they’re working with the CenCal Regional Health Authority in Santa Barbara, CA to obtain permission to use the Caradigm name, which that organization trademarked years ago (their website still comes up at caradigm.com.) GE and Microsoft admit that they invested a lot more due diligence in choosing the Caradigm name than did CenCal RHA, which picked it in an employee “pick a name for our new company” contest 2002. The employee who came up with it got $50 and a pizza party.

A New York Times piece says that Essence Healthcare, financially backed by legendary Silicon Valley investor John Doerr, is finally bearing fruit. Two of its holdings are ClearPractice (EMRs) and Lumeris (analytic software.) Lumeris was just announced as one of the purchasers of healthcare communication network provider NaviNet, where Lumeris software will help physicians answer administrative questions sent via NaviNet.

Meditech kills its contested $65 million project to build an office complex in Freetown, MA, moving on to other location possibilities after a protracted archaeological fight with the state’s historical commission. Freetown gets to keep an empty lot that may or may not contain Native American remains, while somewhere else gets 800 high tech jobs.

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Sales

Humility of Mary Health Partners (OH) signs an agreement with Care Logistics to implement the Care Logistics Hospital Operating System at three of its hospitals.

RegionalCare Hospital Partners (OH) selects MediClick’s supply chain and accounts payable solutions.

Community Health Alliance (VA) partners with MEDfx to create a statewide HIE.

Hawaii selects Medicity to provide the infrastructure for its statewide HIE.

Children’s Hospital and Medical Center (NE) selects iSirona’s device connectivity solution in conjunction with the launch of its Epic EMR.

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People

Diversinet Corp. appoints interim CEO Hon Pak, MD as CEO.

NexJ Systems appoints Eric Gombrich as SVP and GM of its Health Sciences Group.

Elsevier promotes Jay Katzen to managing director of its Clinical Decision Support group within Elsevier Health Sciences.

Randy Drawas joins M*Modal as chief marketing officer.

PerfectServe names Optum Accountable Care Solutions CEO Todd Cozzens to its board.

William G. Bithoney, MD joins the healthcare business of Thomson Reuters as the national provider business medical leader. He was previously interim president, CEO, COO, and CMO at Sisters of Providence Health System (MA).

 

Healthcare consulting firm WPC names Ray Guzman (Microsoft) as SVP of sales and business development and Brad Hutson as  chief security officer.

Fletcher Allen Health Care (VT) hires Healther Roszkowski as chief information security officer.

MedHOK appoints David Butterworth (Emdeon) as SVP of business development.

Glenn Yarbrough joins the Health Information Partnership for Tennessee as director. He was previously with Ardent Health Services and was the CTO of the State of Tennessee.

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Announcements and Implementations

Saratoga Hospital (NY) deploys DigitalPersona Pro and U.are.U Fingerprint Readers for identity authentication.

Norma Tirado, VP of HR and HIT for Lakeland Healthcare (MI), discusses her organization’s implementation of Epic, which goes live this month.

HIMSS and the nonprofit trade association Open Health Tools announce a collaboration to promote the use of open source tools in healthcare.

Optum launches a cloud-based healthcare environment and Optum Care Suite, a set of applications that provide detailed health intelligence on patient, system, and population health. We interviewed Optum SVP Ted Hoy about the announcements this week.

VistA provider DSS launches a mental health kiosk for behavioral health hospitals.

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Government and Politics

Federal authorities say they recovered $4.1 billion in healthcare fraud judgments last year, up about 50% from 2009.

President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal includes $66 million for ONC, an 8% increase over FY2012. That includes $12 million for standards and interoperability work for data exchange, $7.8 million to support EHR adoption, and $5 million for health privacy and security efforts. The proposed budget also includes a 5% cut for the Office for Civil Rights.

The VA wants a 7% increase in its FY 2013 IT budget, looking for $3.37 billion. It wants $169 million to continue development of a shared EMR with the Department of Defense, $53 million to develop a Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record, and $1.45 billion for hardware maintenance. The VA seems to be less optimistic that it seemed previously about turning over its VistA data centers to DoD, saying that unless DoD carves out specific space within its data centers to allow VA personnel to run its own systems, they will pursue setting up interim data centers. Nice digging by the folks at Nextgov.

In Canada, the illegally accessed medical records of a high-ranking member of the country’s Veterans Review and Appeal Board are used in a smear campaign by fellow agency members who disagreed with his review decisions. Up to 40 officials accessed the files of the decorated veteran in order to use his service-related disabilities to discredit him.

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Technology

The US Patent and Trademark Office awards DR Systems a patent related to methods of matching medical images according to user-defined matching rules.

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Other

KLAS examines medical device integration systems, focusing on Capsule’s DataCaptor, Cerner’s iBus, and iSirona’s DeviceConX.

CapSite’s 2012 US Smart Infusion Pump Study finds that 34% of hospitals are in the market for new infusion pumps.

The Tulsa newspaper profiles a BCBS Oklahoma project in which physicians at University of Oklahoma in Tulsa who offer a patient-centered medical home can review the medical claims data of covered patients to get a better picture of their health status.

A Bloomberg article says that TV cable carriers are building up their broadband revenue from hospitals and practices, offsetting declining residential cable subscriber counts by charging medical users higher prices for using their networks. Cox says telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon have 80% of the healthcare business, which it estimates at $460 million in the areas it serves. Comcast says healthcare represents a big chunk of the business services market that it estimates is worth $10-15 billion per year. Cable companies can offer lower prices through bundling, but they are less competitive in the areas of data security and wireless communications. AT&T says its healthcare revenue is $5 billion per year.

In the UK, an orthopedic surgeon criticizes thieves who steal live communications cable, which in repeated incidents has taken hospital systems offline, caused surgeries to be postponed, and forced hospitals to deal with downtime of telephone systems and PACS.

Rice Memorial Hospital (MN), preparing for a computer system conversion, offers patients a 25% amnesty discount to pay old bills so the hospital can shut down its retired billing system earlier.

This isn’t really healthcare related, but it’s too funny not to mention. A Marshall University student files suit against a fraternity and one of its members after a party at the fraternity house, in which the allegedly intoxicated fraternity brother tried to shoot a bottle rocket out of his rear. The plaintiff says the bottle rocket exploded in the brother’s rectum, which according to the suit, “startled the plaintiff and caused him to jump back” and fall off the deck, with the resulting injuries costing him playing time with the baseball team.

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Sponsor Updates

• WellPoint (CO) selects Health Language Inc’s LEAP I-10 to transition to full ICD-10 compliance.
• SRS releases an enhanced version of its certified EHR.
• Heritage Valley Health System (PA) enhances its mobile iPad app using the dbMotion platform.
• Fletcher Allen Health Care (VT) will deploy MEDSEEK’s patient portal and optimization services.
• Wellsoft launches its redesigned website.
• Orion customer Inland Empire HIE launches its pilot running six hospitals, seven practices and a health plan.
• CareTech Solutions releases an interactive brochure explaining the capabilities of a hospital-specific help desk.
• A Vitera Healthcare survey finds that 25% of practices are not aware of the required transition to ICD-10, though larger organizations appear more aware and have a greater sense of urgency.
• Beacon Partners’ Ben Tobin provides tips for managing revenue cycle and cash flows in the midst of health reform.
• The Advisory Board Company announces a webinar highlighting its Crimson Critical Advantage platform.
• Trustwave partners with John Gomez’s JGo Labs to enhance and evolve Trustwave’s healthcare product line.
• Tri-River Family Health Center discusses its use of RelayHealth to  communicate and reduce non-emergency phone calls.
• Caremore (CA) purchases PatientKeeper’s Charge Capture software.
• UMass Memorial (MA) standardizes on Informatica’s data integration platform for integrated views of patients, providers, and encounters.
• Intelligent InSites announces that its RTLS solution supports ThingMagic Astra passive RFID readers.
• Emdeon joins the Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS.

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Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

Monday Morning Update 2/13/12

From Nasty Parts: “Re: Vitera. I hear the total headcount was 337. Word is that they’re dumping Intergy and putting all their efforts behind the MedAppz SaaS product they bought. People who have seen it were unimpressed.” CEO Matt Hawkins covers that ground in the interview I just did with him.

From Vitera Product Vixen: “Re: Vitera. I heard the number was closer to 75, and based on the people I know that were selected, they definitely got it right. Time to cut out the people who weren’t pulling their weight and recognize those of us that have been doing great work. CEO held an all-hands meeting in the afternoon, and gave us a preview of what’s to come – $25 million investment in R&D and new internal systems, new product launches, an iPad app, a Tampa center of excellence, etc. I’m psyched!”

From Carumba: “Re: Epic. I hear their sales folks are telling people that they are live in Abu Dhabi and the Netherlands to sound globally successful. Here’s the Cleveland Clinic hospital in which they are ‘live.’”

From Chayote: “Re: Scott & White. I’m hearing from both inside and outside that they may be merging with Baylor.”

From The PACS Designer: “Re: Hadoop. There’s a new search technique developed by the Apache Software Foundation called Hadoop that may draw some interest from healthcare institutions. While it is currently only being used as a web search tool, the possibility of using it as a tool for searching unstructured patient data files and their related image files presents a golden opportunity to get consolidated information in front of caregivers.  InformationWeek has a more detailed description of Hadoop for those interested in this new concept.“ I actually had Hadoop on my interview question list for Richard Cramer of Informatica, but ran out of time to ask him. They offer Hadoop connectivity and I was going to ask how that might be used in healthcare.

From Nick Barkley: “Re: sponsorship. Our company has been acquired, to be announced February 20. Having a sponsorship with your site has been enormously helpful in initially getting our name out there and gaining (and maintaining) credibility. HIStalk put us on the map and helped make this happen.” Nice, thanks. I don’t know that companies sponsor HIStalk with the hopes of being acquired, but I know it happens pretty often (Inga keeps a list.) That Monday of HIMSS week (the “sort of” first day of the HIMSS conference — it’s actually like the Sunday of previous conferences since the opening sessions are Tuesday) is going to be press release heavy, judging from the announcements I know about and the multiples of those that I don’t. As a vendor public service, I’ll repeat the unsolicited advice I dispense every year: if your announcement doesn’t affect your HIMSS participation, save it until 1-2 weeks after the conference. Unless yours is a big acquisition or new product announcement, it will get lost in the madhouse during the conference, but will run nearly unopposed afterward because your competitors will have shot their PR wad trying to build conference excitement.

My Time Capsule editorial from 2007 for this week: Why You Should Root for Cerner, Even if you Hate Them, where I say, “I want Neal Patterson to keep right on being Neal Patterson, a pig farmer turned Wall Street darling SOB who bootstrapped Cerner out of nothingness and runs it however he damned well pleases, the antithesis of button-down interchangeable bankers-turned-CEOs who manage companies they don’t own as dispassionately as a mutual fund.”

Listening: new Van Halen, which sounds darned good for guys in their late 50s who spent most of the decades since their last big splash fighting with each other and rehabbing. Check out their tour, but I’d be cautious about buying tickets for anything after the Boston show since tours seem to bring out the squabbling between the Van Halen brothers and whoever their lead singer is at the moment (Roth, Hagar, Cherone, lather, rinse, repeat) and the whole thing could go down in flames (think The Eagles without the concert-dollar greed that makes them pretend to get along.) Eddie may not still be gazing romantically over Jenny Craig meals at the still-adorable Valerie Bertinelli, but he plays seriously smoking guitar (live dress rehearsal video here.)

Here’s Vince’s latest HIS-tory, with some fun history of the first bedside terminal, the PNUT.

We should hit the 5 millionth visitor to HIStalk somewhere around Friday of this week. I can’t give a prize since I don’t have any way to know who that reader is, but it will still be fun to watch the counter roll over. That’s a lot of visits even after almost nine years, especially since early on I was thrilled to see a few hundred in a month.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Certify. The San Jose, CA company says it’s the leading and fastest-growing enterprise HIE vendor (71 health systems, 258 hospitals) because it has solved the “last mile” problem for health systems that need to connect to the EMRs of community-based medical practices quickly to deliver immediate value. Setup is a snap: (a) Certify ships the practice a HealthDock edge server; (b) Certify’s Physician Services team walks the practice manager through the 30-minute setup by phone; (c) HealthDock connects to the health system’s Gateway server; (d) the interface is activated and tested; and (e) the practice is up and running with results distribution, order processing, and patient summaries. Physicians get value, hospitals meet Meaningful Use requirements, and the the Certify community eMPI is builds a master patient index in the background for more sophisticated data sharing and analytics projects down the road. For the technologists, Certify supports IHE standards PIX, PDQ, and XDS queries, with HealthDock service as an XDS.b repository and registry, with an end-to-end audit trail, alerts and messaging, failsafe encrypted delivery, and community analytics reporting cubes. One SVP/CIO is quoted on their site as saying, “This is the easiest IT implementation I have ever done,” while hospitals also like the minimal support requirements (less than 0.5 FTE) and all-inclusive fees. They’ll be in Booth #5934 at HIMSS. Thanks to Certify for supporting HIStalk.

Inga has put together our HIMSS Guide, which contains information about what our sponsors are doing their (booth and/or contact information, what they do, etc.) I put a PDF version here. You can help us out by supporting our supporters, as it were, by dropping by their booths and saying you read about them on HIStalk, even if only to say hello and see if they have any cool free stuff.

For you provider-employed folks (hospital, medical practice, etc.) attending the HIMSS conference, let me explain this Booth Crawl thing we’ve been talking about, because it will give you an excellent chance of bringing home a shiny new iPad (your family will be much more impressed than if you return with the usual assortment of note pads and stress balls.) We made the whole thing up at the last minute with the idea of putting iPads in the hands of readers, so forgive any lack of polish on the idea or its execution. Here’s what you do:

1. Download the player form, print it off, and take it along to the conference.
2. Visit the booths and Web pages listed by Wednesday evening, February 22, to get the answers to the questions on the form (the exhibits are open Tuesday from 1:00 to 6:00 and Wednesday from 9:30 until 1:00, then 2:30 until 6:00).
3. Transfer your answers to the online form by Wednesday evening at 7:00 Las Vegas time.
4. Later Wednesday evening, while everybody else is out having a good time, I’ll be holed up in my hotel room doing a manual draw of the winners, making sure you got the answers correct (OK, I may cut you some slack if you miss a couple of questions because I’m just that kind of guy and because I’ll be woozy from working like a dog and eating bad room service food so I can do the drawing and entry-checking, which I’m not looking forward to, but do your best.)
5. I’ll post the names of the winners on HIStalk Wednesday evening and include the name of the sponsor that has your iPad. You swing by during exhibit hall hours Thursday (9:30 to 1:00, 2:30 to 6:00) to caress the iPad’s supple curves and inhale its bewitching scent for the first time, then take it away to its new home for your happy life together. Unlike those lame paper-based contests, you don’t have to be present to win (what’s that all about, anyway?) – the sponsor will ship the iPad to you if you can’t make it Thursday.

Being an objective sort, I asked myself why you should play in our Booth Crawl:

1. Because we look kind of stupid to the companies sponsoring it if nobody plays. We’re not charging them, but it would still be encouraging to them as sponsors of HIStalk to see some folks drop by so they don’t think I’m just making up readership numbers.
2. Because we have 55 iPads to give away, which is good odds for players, maybe the best at the entire conference.
3. Because you’re going to visit booths anyway, so you might as well visit those of the Booth Crawl sponsors and make a fun game out of it that you might win.
4. Because some of the Booth Crawl sponsors are doing other unsanctioned fun stuff for players that you’ll like and that we pretend not to know about.

Baptist Health System (AL) names Chris Davis MD as CMIO to lead its Epic implementation. He was previously with Sisters of Mercy Health System.

A good point to note from my most recent poll: don’t blame your EHR vendor for the clutter of worthless information contained in their product. You can get rid of it at any time, provided you stop dealing with the federal government, insurance companies, and litigious patients. New poll to your right, inspired by NervousIT’s question to me last week: when a big hospital takes over the IT operation of a small one, what’s the impact on the IT influence on patient outcomes?

An article in the local business journal says Cerner brought on 1,700 new employees in 2011 and will hire almost that many in 2012. That must be keeping the parking lots full and the pizza delivery guy busy.

I keep getting cheery HIMSS breakfast invitation e-mails from one of the other sites. I feel kind of honored thinking I’m on some kind of exclusive list until I click the registration link for details, then click again for the registration page, then scroll down to the very, very bottom in small print where I see that I’m to be charged $89 for my presence. Above is what I would get (one or the other, not both) after traipsing to the hotel by 7:00 a.m. and listening to a panel discussion, which is a format that I don’t like at all. I also don’t like being “invited” to something that I have to pay for. 

I’ve mostly stopped running “lost laptop” breach articles since they are common and no longer all that interesting, but here’s an exception: a laptop containing information on 500 patients is stolen from the car of nurse who works for Lakeview Medical Center (WI). Why is that newsworthy? Because the laptop’s hard drive was encrypted. Nice going, 40-bed Lakeview Medical Center.

E-mail Mr. H.

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS12

Download a PDF version of this document here.

3M Health Information Systems       

Booth 3334

Contact: Jolie Gordon, Marketing Communication Specialist
jegordon@mmm.com    801-560-4788

Best known for our market-leading coding system and ICD-10 expertise, 3M Health Information Systems delivers innovative software and consulting services designed to raise the bar for clinical documentation improvement, computer-assisted coding, mobile physician applications, case mix and quality outcomes reporting, and document management. Our robust healthcare data dictionary and terminology services also support the expansion and accuracy of your electronic health record (EHR) system. With nearly 30 years of healthcare industry experience and the know-how of more than 100 credentialed 3M coding experts, 3M is the go-to choice for 5,000+ hospitals worldwide that want to improve quality and financial performance.

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Access

Booth 860

Contact: Cody Strate, Director of Sales
cody.strate@accessefm.com
303.257.3183

Access is the world’s leading electronic forms (e-forms) management, automation and workflow software provider. Our solutions transform any paper-intensive forms process into a paperless, collaborative one.     Stop by HIMSS Booth 860 to see how Access can help you achieve paperless:

• Registration and consent forms on demand with electronic signatures & barcodes
• Human resources, financials and clinical processes, including new employee onboarding, capital requests, and physician referrals
• Clinical data bridge to your enterprise content management system

Learn more at www.accessefm.com.

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Advisory Board Company

Booth 7310

Contact: Leah Bruch, Senior Manager Strategic Marketing
bruchl@advisory.com
202.266.6775

The Advisory Board Company is a global research, consulting, and technology firm partnering with 125,000 leaders in 3,200 organizations across health care and higher education. Through our innovative membership model, we collaborate with executives and their teams to elevate performance and solve their most pressing challenges. We provide strategic guidance, actionable insights, web-based software solutions, and comprehensive implementation and management services.

Learn more at www.advisory.com.

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AirStrip Technologies, Inc. 

Booth 870

Contact: Kimberly Kuzawa, Executive Assistant
Kimberlykuzawa@airstriptech.com
832.330.4419

Native applications from AirStrip Technologies securely send critical patient information from hospital monitoring systems, bedside devices, electronic health records and home devices to a clinician’s smartphone or tablet. FDA cleared, CE Mark certified and designed to meet HIPAA security requirements, AirStrip applications are powered over wired and wireless networks, delivering live patient data anytime, anywhere.

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ANX   

Booth 13429

Contact: Mike Nunez, Director, Healthcare Business Development
nunezm@anx.com
806.797.2923

ANXeBusiness provides innovative solutions that transform the exchange of data throughout the entire healthcare community. This solution set creates an easy, reproducible, cost efficient and secure exchange between hospitals and laboratories. This allows the hospital and laboratory to focus on what they do best; the complete patient continuum of care. To learn more about ANXeBusiness, please visit us at www.anx.com.

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API Healthcare

Booth 2617

Contact: Kenny Amburgey, Vice President of Client Strategies
kenny.amburgey@apihealthcare.com
262.385.7732

Solutions designed for the unique demands of the healthcare industry. API Healthcare solutions create the crucial link that allows you to effectively balance the financial realities of healthcare with the delivery of high quality patient care.   Robust integration and data driven staffing tools are what make API Healthcare workforce management solutions powerful:

• Fully integrated, single platform technology
• Complete multi-dimensional insight into all areas of an organization allow for intuitive, cost effective decisions
• Data driven staffing tools ensure the right patient and the right caregiver match, every time
• Streamlines processes, increases efficiency and optimizes every aspect of your workforce

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Aspen Advisors

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Daniel Herman, Managing Principal and Founder
info@aspenadvisors.net
800-697-4350

Aspen Advisors is a professional services firm with a rich mix of respected industry veterans and rising stars who are united by a commitment to excellence and ongoing dedication to healthcare. Our experienced team is highly skilled in all aspects of healthcare technology. We understand the complexities of healthcare operational processes, the vendor landscape, the political realities, and the importance of projects that are executed successfully – the first time. Every client is important to us, and every project is critical to our reputation. Established in 2006, we’ve grown significantly year-over-year and have earned accolades for our culture and growth.

We were named an “Up and Comer” by Healthcare Informatics in 2010 and ranked #20 in Modern Healthcare’s list of the top 100 “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” in 2011.   Our hallmarks are top quality service and satisfied clients; we’re proud of our KLAS rankings and that each of our clients is 100% referenceable. For the last four consecutive years, Aspen has ranked in the Top 5 in KLAS’ “Best in KLAS Awards” report in the Planning and Assessment category and were included in the Top 20 in the Clinical Implementation Supportive market segment.    Interested in learning more about how Aspen Advisors can help you address the issues on your top priority list?  Or looking to join a firm where healthcare IT consultants aren’t commodities, communication isn’t curbed, and potential never gets stuck in a pigeon hole?

To learn more about Aspen Advisors – either as a prospective client or prospective associate, please consider scheduling an in-person meeting at HIMSS or visit us at http://www.aspenadvisors.net.

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AT&T

Booth 3829

Contact: Deborah Sunday    Marketing Director
ds823e@att.com
678.230.3440

AT&T ForHealth℠ is committed to serving the technology needs across the continuum of care — from hospitals to physicians to patients. Our suite of innovative wireless, cloud-based and networking services and applications empower clinicians by placing vital patient health information at their fingertips. Learn how to rethink healthcare delivery by visiting AT&T ForHealth in Booth #3829 at HIMSS12 in Las Vegas. Also, be sure to visit and hear AT&T speakers in the HIMSS Knowledge Centers for Mobile Health (#12928, Hall G, Kiosk 14 ), Cloud Computing (#13624, Hall G, Kiosk 5) and Accountable Care Organizations/Value-Based Purchasing (#6466, Hall D, Kiosk 8)

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Aventura

Booth 8300

Contact: Brian Stern, VP of Sales
info@aventurahq.com
888.484.4643

Aventura improves the current workflow of doctors and nurses. We give clinicians the information they need, when and where they need it. Our context aware computing intelligence orchestrates technologies already in place making them responsive to the user. The result is improved clinician satisfaction, increased EMR use at the point of care, and an increased focus on the quality of care.

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Awarepoint Corporation

Booth 3412

Contact: Merrie Wallace, Executive Vice President, Product Solutions and Marketing
marketing@awarepoint.com
888.860.3463

Awarepoint’s aware360Suite provides intelligent workflow solutions that meet departmental and enterprise-wide patient tracking needs. The solution visualizes patient flow without requiring personnel to manually update care status information. Patient location, movement and interactions with tagged personnel and clinical equipment trigger updates to the web-based software, which employs workflow rules to recognize patient care milestones. By improving patient visibility throughout the enterprise, Awarepoint helps administrators and clinicians to advance the QUALITY of care, the EFFICIENCY of care, the EXPERIENCE of care, and the ECONOMICS of care.

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Beacon Partners   

Booth 3926

Contact: Katelyn MacKay, Business Development Coordinator
kmackay@beaconpartners.com
781.681.7407

As one of the largest healthcare management consulting firms, Beacon Partners is chosen by organizations in the healthcare community to provide advisory services to improve overall operational, clinical and financial performance with the adoption of information technology. With our strategic approach and depth of experience, Beacon Partners is qualified to help organizations navigate the challenges in healthcare and optimize their potential to deliver the highest possible level of patient care.

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BESLER Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jim Hoffman, Chief Technology Officer
jhoffman@besler.com
732.392.8214
Available at HIMSS Tuesday or Wednesday

BESLER develops software tools and provides consulting services that help acute care hospitals get paid everything they deserve.  Our BVerified ™ online solutions allow our customers to manage underpayment recoveries that have traditionally been accomplished via a consulting engagement, providing typical saving of 50%.  We’ve just launched our two newest products and we’re the only company with an end-user technology solution to address the Medicare IME and Transfer DRG underpayment issues.

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Billian’s HealthDATA

Booth 7707

Contact: Jennifer Dennard, Social Marketing Director
jdennard@billian.com
678.569.4872

Billian’s HealthDATA is the leading provider of comprehensive market intelligence on the healthcare industry, covering facilities across the continuum of care – from Hospitals and Hospital-Affiliated Physicians to Long Term Care. Billian’s dedication to providing high-quality data via products like the Portal, coupled with partner company Porter Research’s custom market research services, provides customers with healthcare business intelligence about multiple markets in scaleable formats

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Bottomline Technologies

Booth 12928 (Mobile Health Knowledge Center, Hall G)

Contact: Sarah Stevenson, Healthcare Marketing Manager
sstevenson@bottomline.com
603.380.8577

For more than 20 years, Bottomline has been focused on software applications that optimize document-driven processes. As a result, Bottomline possesses both the proven solutions and the tested domain expertise to deliver consistent customer value and significant return on investment. Bottomline’s medical forms solutions are used by 900+ hospitals to reduce costs, increase productivity & improve patient safety. Our goal is to help hospitals, clinics and practices adopt electronic medical records – from registration and consents to clinical documentation – an evolution that has been plagued by counter-intuitive approaches that aren’t as flexible and fast as paper.

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CAP Professional Services   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Chip Perkins, Managing Director
cperkins@cap.org
847.832.7280

CAP Professional Services, a division of the College of American Pathologists, works to align health care information and technology to drive performance and quality. We are advancing health information excellence by focusing on services such as: Health Information Strategies and Management, Clinical Data and Terminology Services, and Laboratory Services. For more information, call 847-832-7700 or email capsts@cap.org.

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CapSite

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Bryan Fiekers, Director of Business Development
bryan.fiekers@capsite.com
802.383.8205

CapSite is a healthcare technology research and advisory firm. Our mission is to help healthcare providers and vendors make more informed strategic decisions.The CapSite Database is the trusted, easy to use online database, providing critical knowledge and evidence based information on healthcare technology purchases. CapSite™ data provides detailed transparency on healthcare technology pricing, packaging and positioning.When it all comes to healthcare technology research, it helps to see all the details. Those details are now available with CapSite™

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Capsule Tech, Inc

Main Booth 6141
HIMSS Intelligent Hospital Pavilion Booth 12442
Interoperability Showcase Booth 11000
Medical Devices Integration Knowledge Center Booth 14647

Contact: Heather Hitchcock, Vice President of Global Marketing
marketing@capsuletech.com
978.482.2337

Capsule is the leading provider of medical device integration. Capsule’s Device Connectivity Solution is the most proven, vendor neutral solution available for device connectivity. It features a patient-centric design that is completely flexible and scalable and integrates with existing technologies and clinical workflows. Stop by our booth 6141 to see why over 1000 hospitals have chosen Capsule for device integration.

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Care360

Booth 2813

Contact: Joel Williams, Associate Director-Sales Support and Operations
Info@Care360.com
www.Care360.com
888.835.3409

Racing to Expand Your Physician Community? Accelerate your competitive advantage by joining our existing Care360 network of more than 200,000 physicians in 80,000 physician offices. Care360® EHR is a certified EHR solution that can be up and running in as little as 30 days, allowing physicians to transition workflow from paper to electronic management in a modular approach. Care360 EHR with Data Exchange connects hospitals to physician practices with a web-based platform to share information. ChartMaxx® DMI/ECM enables healthcare organizations to see immediate improvements through electronic document and content management, eForms and automated workflows that cross existing sytems. To learn more, visit Care360.com

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Certify Data Systems, Inc.

Booth 5934

Contact: David Caldwell, Executive Vice President
sales@certifydatasystems.com
713.446.3376

Certify Data Systems, Inc., is a pioneer in health information exchange (HIE) technology. The company’s Enterprise HIE Platform has been adopted by the nation’s leading hospitals and health systems.  The bi-directional HIE platform, provides true interoperability between disparate Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, enabling hospitals and health systems, their affiliated physician practices and laboratories to exchange essential health information in real-time without changing workflow.  Moreover, Certify’s “network approach” is easy to deploy, scale, manage and support. For more information, please visit http://www.certifydatasystems.com. Follow us on Twitter at @CertifyData.

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Command Health   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact:
Evan Frankel, Director of Product Management
evan.frankel@commandhealth.com
303.301.0430

Command Health is the leader of narrative note technology, focusing on unifying clinical documentation from disparate sources across the continuum of care. Combining verbal interaction with visual integration, Command Health enables the efficient and accurate capture of patient data that is easy to find, use, share and search by converting locked, inaccessible data into actionable, meaningful information. Using proprietary natural language processing (NLP) technology combined with human intelligence, Command Health delivers the most comprehensive clinical data available, helping providers reduce costs, assess risk and manage outcomes.

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CTG Health Solutions   

Booth 2070

Contact: Carl Ferguson, Jr., Managing Director
carl.ferguson@ctghs.com
214.695.4227

CTG Health Solutions is a leading healthcare IT consulting firm providing strategic, clinical, financial, operational, and technology solutions. Offering advisory services, strategic/tactical planning, vendor selection, implementation, legacy system support, program/project management and advance technology services, CTG helps healthcare organizations address regulatory mandates of meaningful use, 5010, ICD-10, HIE, electronic medical records, accountable care and evolving health reform. CTG Health Solutions is a business unit of CTG (NASDAQ: CTGX) a publicly owned IT services and solutions company founded in 1966 that generated revenue of $331 million in 2010. More information is available at www.ctghs.com.

Experience matters. Over the last 25 years, CTG Health Solutions has provided healthcare IT, and operational and strategic consulting support to over 600 healthcare organizations. Since 2008, CTG has continuously been named to Healthcare Informatics top 100 healthcare IT providers and the Modern Healthcare lists of the largest healthcare management consulting firms. CTG was also cited in the March 25, 2010, issue of Information Week as one of the top three firms for healthcare organizations looking for help in implementing EMRs and other health IT investments.

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Cumberland Consulting Group

Booth 5147

Contact: Jim Lewis, Managing Partner
jim.lewis@cumberlandcg.com
615.373.4470

Cumberland Consulting Group is a national technology implementation and project management firm serving ambulatory, acute, and post-acute healthcare providers. Through the implementation of new technologies, Cumberland works with providers to advance the quality of care delivered, and improve business performance. Cumberland Consulting Group offers an invigorating, positive work environment and a commitment to superior talent acquisition, development and retention.Cumberland was named Best in KLAS for IT Planning & Assessment in the 2011 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services report, finishing in a first-place tie.

Cumberland Consulting Group Says: Stop by and meet some of our top implementation consultants and learn about Cumberland’s excellent delivery record, straightforward implementation methods and lean operating model that delivers big company results at a very attractive price. Be sure to catch Cumberland’s Erik Howell presenting Physician-to-Physician: Driving Inpatient CPOE Clinical Transformation, Session 184,Thursday Feb. 23 at 2:15pm.

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CynergisTek   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Stephanie Crabb, VP of Client Services
stephanie.crabb@cynergistek.com
512.402.8550 or 954.298.4702

CynergisTek is an authority in healthcare information security management services and solutions.  We assist hospitals, payers, vendors and other valued business partners to the healthcare industry with the development and management of standards-based, industry-appropriate, business-driven and compliance-aware information security programs.  CynergisTek is a full-service firm offering solutions in the areas of strategy and governance, compliance and risk, technical security management, managed security solutions and partner technology resales and implementation.    CynergisTek was chosen to provide advisory and consulting services throughout the organization’s audit experience by one of the first 20 entities targeted by OCR for its HIPAA Audit Program.  CynergisTek has led dozens of risk assessment projects for organizations attesting for Meaningful Use.  CynergisTek has established its Surveyor program to provide critical third-party review of business associate compliance with HIPAA and to support organizations with independent review of IT security performance as part of their M&A due diligence activities.  CynergisTek has led dozens of data discovery and data loss breach risk assessments to help organizations identify where PHI/PII reside in their organizations and how that data is being handled.
CynergisTek is working on the front lines, side-by-side, with our clients to address the most pressing IT security, privacy and data governance challenges.  We are visionary.  We are practical. We make our clients better.

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DrFirst, Inc.

Booth 5456

Contact: Timur Tugberk, Events, Brand, and Media Coordinator
ttugberk@drfirst.com
301.231.9510 ex. 2835

Founded in 2000, DrFirst is the nation’s leading e-prescribing and solutions platform provider to physician practices, major health plans, health systems, hospitals, and EHR vendors. Through its Open Borders Program, DrFirst solutions integrate with over 200 EHR, practice management and HIT systems. A Surescripts Gold Certified solution provider for four consecutive years with its award-winning Rcopia electronic prescription management system, DrFirst utilizes the Surescripts network for pharmacy connectivity, health plan information, and patient medication history. For more information, visit www.drfirst.com.

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eClinicalWorks   

Booth 531

Contact: Heather Caouette, Marketing
heather.c@eclinicalworks.com
508.836.2700

eClinicalWorks offers ambulatory clinical solutions consisting of EMR/PM software, patient portals and a community health records application. With more than 180,000 providers and 370,000 healthcare professionals across all 50 states using its solutions, customers include physician practices, out-patient departments of hospitals, health centers, departments of health and convenient care clinics. At HIMSS, please visit the eClinicalWorks booth to see the latest in iPad and patient applications, community analytics and ACO capabilities.

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Elumin Healthcare Solutions

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Mark Williams, CEO & President
mwilliams@eluminhs.com
425.369.8211

Elumin works with healthcare organizations across the country to improve quality, efficiency and their bottom line through the use of information technology throughout the continuum of care. Our work ultimately leads to greater clinician, physician, staff and patient satisfaction. Many of Elumin’s consultants are clinicians, and many have worked in hospitals and physician practices as business and clinical leaders. Many are certified and experienced in premier technologies such as Allscripts, Epic, Cerner, NextGen and Siemens. On average, our consultants have more than 15 years of experience. We strive to achieve 100% referenceability among our clients. Elumin is 100% focused on healthcare.

Elumins services include:  advisory services, system implementations, data conversions, clinical optimization, revenue cycle management, legacy platform support, ICD-10, 5010 migration, and interim staffing. Our team of experienced healthcare professionals thrives on implementing best practices, optimizing technology and guiding clients through the change management process.

Elumin representatives will be attending the 2012 HIMSS conference Monday Feb. 20 – Friday, Feb. 24. They look forward to meeting new healthcare industry leaders and sharing insight on trending topics.  Let us help you bring light to the best of healthcare technologies’ promise.

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Encore Health Resources

Booth 123

Contact: Randi Fiedler, Director, Sales Operations
rfiedler@encorehealthresources.com
832.289.0923

Encore Health Resources helps implement and optimize EHRs and complex clinical systems to get value from the data. We do this through our tools, knowledge base and proprietary approach, and by employing healthcare IT professionals with deep operational experience.

Encore was formed by healthcare IT veterans Dana Sellers and Ivo Nelson. We are one of the fastest growing independent consulting firms in the history of our industry. That rapid growth is attributed to our principles’ sterling reputation, our staff’s depth of experience, and our commitment to remaining 100% referenceable with each and every one of our clients. Encore has consistently been named one of the “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” by Modern Healthcare magazine.

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ESD

Booth 4616

Contact: Jessica St. John, Director of Business Development
jstjohn@contactesd.com
419.841.3179

ESD is a leading healthcare IT consulting firm that assists organizations implement new or updated heathcare information technology. Experienced clinical consultants provided by ESD work closely with hospitals, clinics and health systems to evaluate current capabilities, establish clinical transformation strategies and assist clinicians in the transition to new or updated solutions, with the end goal being a successful transition to new technology. ESD’s headquarters is located in Toledo, Ohio and has five satellite offices located in Atlanta, Detroit, Cincinnati, New York and Houston.

Whether it’s time to implement a whole new system throughout your organization or just a component to one department, we have the experience and resources to both complement your team, and meet your goals.

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Etransmedia Technology, Inc

Booth 13635

Contact: Craig Cane,VP, Business Development
craig@etransmedia.com
845.594.7247

Etransmedia Technology, Inc is a premier provider of information solutions to the healthcare industry, delivering comprehensive integrated software, service and connectivity solutions to simplify critical functions in the healthcare community. Etransmedia is committed to providing the right solutions to build an effective community of care, driving revenues and efficiencies for ambulatory, acute and diagnostic facilities, and increasing the availability of information to providers making critical care decisions.

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First Databank (FDB)   

Booth 2338

Contact: Denise Apcar, Brand Communications Manager
dapcar@fdbhealth.com
800.633.3453

First Databank (FDB) provides drug knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise medication-related decisions. With thousands of customers worldwide, FDB enables our information system developer partners to deliver a wide range of valuable, useful, and differentiated solutions. As the company that virtually launched the medication decision support category, we offer more than three decades of experience in transforming drug knowledge into actionable, targeted, and effective solutions that improve patient safety and healthcare outcomes. For a complete look at our solutions and services please visit fdbhealth.com

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Fulcrum Methods

Booth 13247 Kiosk 6

Contact: Rick Beberman, Corporate Programs
rbeberman@fulcrummethods.com
510.287.3927

Fulcrum Methods has developed toolkits to assist hospitals and health systems with project management and meaningful use.  We deliver work plans, guidebooks, libraries of deliverables, and online assessment tools to help organizations with vendor selection, systems implementation, long-range planning, establishing a program management office, managing organizational change, and meeting meaningful use requirements.

We have a great client list – Stanford University Hospital & Clinics, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, University Hospitals, MaineHealth, University of Kentucky HealthCare, John Muir Health, Community Medical Centers, and NorthBay Healthcare, among others. Our tools are encyclopedias of best practices and designed to develop core competencies, reduce execution risk, accelerate project rollout, and keep organization knowledge in-house.

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GetWellNetwork 

Booth 7910

Contact: Tony Cook, Vice President Marketing
tcook@getwellnetwork.com
202-321-9396

GetWellNetwork entertains, educates, and empowers patients throughout the patient journey using the bedside TV in the hospital, mobile devices, Web or Cable TV at home. Our patient-centered approach improves both satisfaction and outcomes for patients and hospitals. Additionally, the company extends the value of existing IT investments by integrating seamlessly to leading HIT systems including Cerner, McKesson, Epic, Meditech, GE and Siemens.

GetWellNetwork is recognized by KLAS® as the leader in Interactive Patient Systems and is exclusively endorsed by the American Hospital Association. More information about GetWellNetwork can be found at www.GetWellNetwork.com.

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Harris Corporation   

Booth 834

Contact: Amy Ferretti, Vice President, Marketing
amy.ferretti@harris.com
925.518.9895

Harris is advancing healthcare for more than 300,000 users at over 2,000 provider organizations delivering care to nearly 13,000,000 patients – by delivering proven solutions that enable healthcare organizations to constantly improve quality of care while containing costs, increasing revenue, and addressing the new world of accountability and value.   We provide a portfolio of solutions that promote interoperability, streamlined workflow, and analytics; all of which are adaptable to our customer’s specific care delivery setting and the unique requirements of their physical, technical, and user environments.

• Health Information Exchange
• Patient Portal
• Provider Portal
• Business Intelligence
• Workflow Management
• Image Management
• Managed Services
• Systems Integration  Communications

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Hayes Management Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Bill Gannon, Director
bgannon@hayesmanagement.com
541.647.0825

Hayes Management Consulting is currently helping clients prepare for Meaningful Use, ICD-10 migration, and other initiatives by providing strategic guidance and hands-on expertise in EHR system implementation and optimization, project management, project resources and more.

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Healthwise 

Booth 4627

Contact: Dave Mink, Account Executive
dmink@healthwise.org
208.331.6971

Healthwise leads the way with ONC–ATCB-certified patient education that contributes to improved care quality. Helping hospitals meet Meaningful Use criteria today, and tomorrow’s ACO goals, the Healthwise Patient Education Solution seamlessly integrates into EMRs, PHRs, and websites. Ask about our new shared decision-making tools and patient response. www.healthwise.org.

 

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Holon Solutions   

Booth 12214

Contact: Sandra Schafer, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development
sschafer@holonsolutions.com
678.324.2039

At Holon we believe that collaboration improves lives. Holon’s CollaborNet™ facilitates collaboration among healthcare providers by creating secure networks that manage the assembly, packaging, routing and delivery of vital health information. Holon’s CollaborNet connects providers regardless of their level of technological sophistication, using the systems in place and with or without standard communication protocols. CollaborNet is flexible and adaptable and can support changes to communication standards and methods as they develop. CollaborNet builds value from the bottom up by delivering information WHEN, WHERE and HOW you need it. For more information please visit us at www.HolonSolutions.com.

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Iatric Systems, Inc.

Booth 7905

Contact: Judy Volker
Judy.Volker@iatric.com
978.805.3191

If you’re attending HIMSS12 to find ways to get the most out of your HIS, be sure to visit Iatric Systems booth. There you’ll learn about solutions that can be integrated with your HIS in order to help you achieve interoperability, meet Meaningful Use objectives and support your ACO initiatives.

Recognized by Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest growing privately held companies for the past four years, Iatric Systems helps hospitals and health systems leverage their HIS investment with software, interfaces and reporting services. Since 1990, more than 1,000 hospitals worldwide have implemented Iatric Systems solutions; optimizing patient care and staff workflow in clinical, financial and administrative areas. Iatric Systems was acknowledged on the Healthcare Informatics Top 100 Healthcare IT Revenue list in 2009/2010/2011 and the Modern Healthcare Top 100 Best Places to Work in Healthcare IT in 2009/2010/2011.

Get your chance to win an iPad 2 during the HIStalk Booth Crawl: Be sure to stop at the Iatric Systems booth for the chance to win the perfect, portable tool for checking e-mail, surfing the Web, playing games, reading books and visiting important Websites like Iatric.com.

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ICA  

Booth 4831

Contact: John Tempesco, CMO
john.tempesco@icainformatics.com
615.866.1465

ICA’s CareAlign® care management solutions connect the healthcare community with proven interoperability technologies enabling health information exchange and improved care delivery. This patient-centered modular approach offers immediate value and return-on-investment to communities, IDNs, hospitals and physicians through the delivery of clinical information to the point-of-care improving quality while reducing costs.  Visit booth #4831 for a demonstration of the CareAlign solution suite.

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iMDsoft   

Booth 4215

Contact: Steve Sperrazza, Vice President, North America Sales
sales@imd-soft.com
866.4 iMDsoft, 781.449.5567

iMDsoft is a leading provider of Clinical Information Systems for critical and perioperative care. The company’s flagship family of solutions, the MetaVision Suite, was first implemented in 1999. It captures, documents, analyzes, reports and stores the vast amount of patient-related data generated in a hospital. Over 125 hospitals worldwide use MetaVision to support their workflow, and arm their healthcare professionals with timely, accurate, and actionable information. iMDsoft products demonstrate 100% implementation success rate and a 100% customer retention rate.

Come visit our booth to find out why 4 of the top 10 US hospitals have decided that MetaVision is the best choice for improving care quality and financial performance. Providing an integrated edge where it matters most, MetaVision delivers high-impact results such as 30% fewer mortalities, 100% billable anesthesia records, total elimination of prescription errors, 99% compliance with PQRS measures and doubled protocol compliance.

Learn more about how MetaVision interoperates with the latest technologies and seamlessly integrates with hospital systems at the HIMSS12 Interoperability Showcase held in collaboration with Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), from 21-23 February.

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Imprivata   

Booth 3160

Contact: Jim Whelan, VP of NA Healthcare Sales
jwhelan@imprivata.com
508.395.2235

Learn directly from hospital CIOs on how they saved their clinicians more than 15 minutes per day and improved workflows with Imprivata OneSign. Hospital CIOs and Directors using Epic, McKesson, Siemens, Meditech and Healthland will be available to answer your questions. After the presentations, you can try a hands-on demo of No Click AccessTM to applications and roaming virtual desktops throughout the Imprivata booth. Imprivata is also raffling off 30 Kindle Fires, which will be raffled off after each theater presentation!

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Informatica   

Booth 9107

Contact: Jonathan Shafer, Senior Customer Marketing Campaign Manager
jshafer@informatica.com
650.385.5000

Informatica Corporation is the leading independent provider of enterprise data integration software and services. Using Informatica solutions, healthcare organizations can access, discover, cleanse, integrate, and deliver all enterprise data to improve health outcomes, meet compliance mandates, streamline operations, increase agility, and refocus energy on the consumer. More than 4,100 companies worldwide and hundreds of healthcare companies rely on Informatica for their end-to-end enterprise data integration needs.

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Ingenious Med   

Booth 4663

Contact: Laura DePeters,Marketing Manager
laura.depeters@ingeniousmed.com
404.786.2340

Ingenious Med’s Inpatient Physician Management Platform is the leading charge capture and physician performance solution in the health care industry today. Our cloud-based, charge capture and analytics platform provides real-time data that helps hospital systems and physician groups maximize revenue, improve physician productivity, enhance quality of care, and increase diagnosis and billing accuracy and compliance.

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Intelligent Medical Objects Inc.   

Booth 1256

Contact: Dennis Carson, Director, Marketing & Tradeshows
dcarson@imo-online.com
636.477.8710

Interoperability For Healthcare Institutions IMO® Vocabulary products provide a common linkage across all electronic patient records, regardless of the standard needed for that particular data set (ICD9-CM, SNOMED® CT, HCPCS, RxNorm, ICD-10-CM). Most code mappings are updated several times per year, including regulatory updates. IMO® removes the burden of managing updates for you. Terminology Mapping For EMR Software Vendors    IMO® Vocabulary products let you focus on what you do best: provide great software to the healthcare industry. We furnish up-to-date code and terminology mappings, with expanded search capabilities, across standards needed for EMRs, EHRs and PHRs (ICD9-CM, ICD10-CM, SNOMED® CT, HCPCS, RxNorm). Get ready for ICD-10 now!

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Intellect Resources       

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Stowe Blankenship,Business Development Executive
336.790.8724 x 303
sblankenship@intellectresources.com
http://www.facebook.com/IntellectResourcesFan@wespeakHIT

We speak the language of Healthcare IT. Intellect Resources is proud to offer comprehensive consulting, recruiting and hiring solutions within the Healthcare IT market. Our talent offerings include recruiting, project management, implementation, upgrading and optimization of EMR systems, training and go-live support and the revolutionary Big BreakSM hiring process.     Big BreakSM is patent-pending American Idol style audition process where candidates compete to become a healthcare IT trainer and instruct healthcare personnel on the use an EMR program. Big Break offers hospitals systems a unique and innovative talent pool at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions.

For more information visit www.intellectresources.com or www.irbigbreak.com.

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Intelligent InSites   

Booths 12217, 12442-18

Contact: George Sun, VP of Sales
george.sun@intelligentinsites.com
972.567.2114

Intelligent InSites helps hospitals improve care and reduce costs by transforming automatically-collected data into actionable insights.Through its interoperable, hardware-agnostic, healthcare real-time location system (RTLS) software platform, Intelligent InSites gathers data from real-time location, condition sensing, and other systems; then delivers meaningful information to the right person, at the right time, on the right device.

By leveraging this real-time data and InSites’ applications, such as asset management, patient flow, temperature monitoring, and business intelligence, healthcare organizations are able to achieve meaningful and measurable hard-dollar cost savings while improving patient satisfaction and patient care. The InSites RTLS solution for Patient Flow enables hospitals to improve capacity management and key metrics such as Left Without Treatment (LWOT) and Length of Stay (LOS). It also improves rounding management, along with ED and OR workflow. With the InSites solution, hospitals can monitor patient flow and progress from admission to discharge, analyze throughput and proactively react to potential bottlenecks – all in real-time.  The InSites RTLS solution for Asset Management enables hospitals to optimize equipment inventories and equipment procurement, as well as reduce rental expenses. By eliminating time needed to find available equipment, hospitals can increase value-added time for nursing staff, clinical engineering, and facilities management, leading to improved patient and staff satisfaction.The InSites Business Intelligence (BI) solution enables easy-to-use data mining of vast quantities of contextual data stored in the InSites Business Intelligence database, allowing healthcare users to analyze trends, identify process improvement opportunities, and report on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This enables hospitals and healthcare systems to achieve powerful and flexible enterprise-wide visibility into their processes and make transformational impacts on their organization’s performance.

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iSirona  

Booth 12414

Contact: Peter Witonsky,President & CSO
peter.witonsky@isirona.com
610.772.7648

iSirona helps clinicians make more informed decisions about patients by providing an easy to use approach to medical device integration. Using iSirona’s software solution, hospitals can connect virtually any medical device to their CIS, providing clinicians with faster access to more accurate patient information. In 2011, iSirona was ranked #1 by KLAS for medical device integration systems.

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Levi, Ray and Shoup, Inc.   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: John Runions, Director, Worldwide Business Development / Alliances
john.runions@lrs.com
217-725-4017.    John Runions

Does your hospital struggle with printing issues? For more than three decades, LRS has been helping hospitals meet the need for reliable document delivery of critical healthcare documents. LRS works directly with leading Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software providers to provide a seamless platform for assured delivery of any document from any system — to any destination in your environment. This all managed from a secure central point of control designed to save effort, money and time when seconds count.

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Lifepoint Informatics   

Booth 153

Contact: Lee Barnard, Chief Business Development Officer
lbarnard@lifepoint.com
201.560.3802

Lifepoint Informatics is a leader in health IT focusing on laboratory outreach connectivity, health information exchange and clinical data interoperability to deliver on its mission to help healthcare providers improve patient care and lower costs through the use of information technology. Since 1999, Lifepoint Informatics has enabled over 200 hospitals, clinical labs and anatomic pathology groups to grow their market share and extend their outreach programs through the deployment of its ONC-ATCB certified Web Provider Portal and its comprehensive portfolio of ready-to-go EMR/EHR interfaces.
For more Information please visit www.lifepoint.com.

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Macadamian   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Didier Thizy,  Director of Healthcare IT
didier@macadamian.com
613.219.5708

Macadamian is a global UI design and software innovation studio with significant  sector expertise in healthcare and life sciences. We work with Healthcare and medical  device companies to create visually stunning, intuitive, and commercially-successful software  products. We can help you transform your ideas into market-ready products that will stand  out from your competition.

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MED3OOO   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Nicole Contardo, Corporate Marketing Director
Nicole_Contardo@MED3000.com
919.794.5881

Since its founding in 1995, MED3OOO has grown to become a leading provider of healthcare management, operations, and information technology services across the United States.  With over 2,100 employees, MED3OOO provides sophisticated management services and innovative technology products which differentiate its physician, hospital, employer, government, and payer clients.  The company provides a complete platform of clinical and business performance solutions, including PM, EHR, RCM, population health management, and smart communication systems, along with management, knowledge and operations, and affiliation strategies which help its clients improve clinical and financial outcomes. MED3OOO partners with organizations across the healthcare spectrum who truly understand that Outcomes Matter.

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MedAptus

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jennifer Crowley, Marketing Director
jcrowley@medaptus.com
617.896.4099

MedAptus is the Gold Standard in the healthcare revenue cycle for achieving effective charge management, compliance and workflow efficiency. With our powerful and easy-to-use Intelligent Charge Capture, many of the nation’s most prestigious healthcare organizations rely on MedAptus for financial optimization. Our solutions increase revenue, enhance EMR investments, re-engineer manual processes and yield substantially improved productivity. For more information about how MedAptus can help you improve your financial performance while helping you prepare for ICD-10, visit www.medaptus.com.

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Medicomp Systems

Booth 855

Contact: James Aita, Sr. Product Manager
jaita@medicomp.com
703.803.8080×221

Medicomp Systems innovates and continuously improves medical information technologies that provide clinicians with the power and freedom to focus on the patient. Medicomp’s EHR tools are dynamic and easy to use, based on the way clinicians think and work, and provide immediate access to the total patient picture. At the heart of every product is the powerful MEDCIN® Engine, a robust clinical data engine used by clinicians and hospitals throughout the world.

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MEDSEEK

Booth 1345

Contact: Mandi Coker, Director, Corporate Marketing
mandi.coker@medseek.com
205.982.5821

MEDSEEK’s digital health solutions help healthcare organizations predict patient health requirements, plan capital investments, influence patient behavior, activate patients, expand business and manage patients across the continuum  of care to find new cost savings and revenue streams. Find out how to strategically engage and manage your patients today – 888.MEDSEEK or sales@medseek.com.

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MedVentive   

Booth 6466-1, ACO Knowledge Center

Contact: Nancy Brown, Chief Growth Officer
nbrown@medventive.com
781.290.2511

MedVentive provides the tools and experience you need for two key issues faced in evolving into an ACO: understanding patient populations and being financially at risk for the quality and cost of care. MedVentive Population Manager provides the IT infrastructure needed to support FTC required Clinical Integration and overall population management. MedVentive Risk Manager provides the analytic platform to manage your multi-payer risk contracts.

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Merge Healthcare   

Booth 1023

Contact: Brenda Stewart, Director, Marketing Communications
brenda.stewart@merge.com
773.726.8901

Merge Healthcare is a leading provider of enterprise imaging and interoperability solutions.  Merge solutions facilitate the sharing of images to create a more effective and efficient electronic healthcare experience for patients and physicians.  Merge provides enterprise imaging solutions for radiology, cardiology, orthopaedics and eye care; a suite of products for clinical trials; software for financial and pre-surgical management, and applications that fuel the largest modality vendors in the world. Merge’s products have been used by healthcare providers, vendors and researchers worldwide to improve patient care for more than 20 years.  This year, we are thrilled to showcase our comprehensive enterprise imaging solutions that allow you to image enable your EHR. You will also have the opportunity to register for FREE image sharing via our new cloud platform, Merge Honeycomb™, and learn how to earn Meaningful Use incentives with our specialty EHR solutions. Additional information can be found at www.merge.com.

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MyHealthDIRECT

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Zac Fritz, SVP of Sales and Marketing
zfritz@myhealthdirect.com
262.309.2090

MyHealthDIRECT provides the nation’s only ‘healthcare scheduling exchange’ (HSE) for health plans, hospitals, health systems, ACOs and HIEs.Their SaaS-platform is proven “commercial-grade” and “enterprise-ready” and is scalable, flexible, and secure. The MyHealthDIRECT HSE-platform is the industry’s only technology with proven application across the entire care continuum: from care coordination efforts and call centers to mHealth initiatives or Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) strategies and ACO referral management. MyHealthDIRECT: The nation’s only ‘healthcare scheduling exchange’.

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NextGate   

Booth 7000

Contact: Richard Garcia, VP Marketing
richard.garcia@nextgate.com
626.262.4010

Information is good. Knowledge is better! The NextGate® Registry Suite for Healthcare goes beyond standard integration to satisfy today’s intricate, multi-entity healthcare data exchange requirements.   HIEs, ACOs, IDNs and similar organizations need a dynamic, sophisticated framework to coordinate information from diverse sources to support coherent and meaningful data exchange. The registry suite uses the leading MatchMetrix® data integration platform to analyze and integrate the different data elements of a complex activity, promoting greater efficiency and insight. The suite includes an EMPI, Provider Registry and Directory, Location Registry, Activity Registry, Code Set Registry, Enterprise Transaction Registry, and a Relation service to define associations between objects. With over 75 million unique identities managed by MatchMetrix and hundreds of registry implementations, NextGate offers unequalled expertise in deploying master index and data integration solutions. Be certain about the data you exchange!

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Nordic Consulting Partners, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Drew Madden, President
drew.madden@nordicwi.com
608.268.6900

Nordic was founded by former Epic consultants, and is the largest Epic-only implementation firm in the country.We focus exclusively on Epic software implementations. We’re located in Madison, WI, home to Epic Systems, Inc., which gives us access to some of the top EMR experts in the industry. Our team of senior consultants average 6-year of Epic implementation experience; 80% are former Epic employees with an average of four certifications each. They’re seasoned professionals who have worked with hundreds of hospitals and clinics nationwide. Whether you need help with a short-term project, or a team of consultants to oversee implementation from start to finish, our staff will be valuable members of your team.Nordic works with healthcare organizations in 14 states, with clients that include Children’s hospitals, University hospitals and community healthcare providers of all sizes. We understand their dedication to patient care and the high standards their EMR projects must meet. Nordic will help you build the right team for your organization.

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NTT DATA Healthcare Technologies (formerly Keane)   

Booth 3064

Contact: Larry Kaiser, Senior Marketing Manager
lkaiser@keane.com
631.824.5318

In business since 1975 and based in the United States, NTT Data Healthcare Technologies offers complete IT solutions to hospitals and long-term care facilities throughout the country. NTT DATA’s proprietary software and services help health organizations increase efficiency, reduce medical errors, meet regulatory requirements, and enhance the revenue cycle. An electronic health record (EHR) solution, the Optimum suite of fully integrated certified clinical applications helps hospitals and healthcare facilities reduce medical errors, increase efficiency, and improve the delivery of care.

Stop by for a cup of cappuccino and find out how NTT DATA Healthcare Technologies can help you today.

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Nuance Communications, Inc.

Booth 3523

Contact: Mark Erwich, Senior Director, Marketing
mark.erwich@nuance.com
781.565.5000

Nuance Healthcare, a division of Nuance Communications, is a market leader in providing clinical understanding solutions that accurately capture and transform the patient story into meaningful, actionable information. Thousands of hospitals, providers and payers worldwide trust Nuance voice-enabled clinical documentation and analytics solutions to facilitate smarter, more efficient decisions across the healthcare enterprise. These solutions are proven to increase clinician satisfaction and HIT adoption, supporting organizations to achieve Meaningful Use of EHR systems and transform to the accountable care model. Recognized as “Best-in-KLAS” 2004-2011 for Voice Recognition we invite you to learn more at booth #3523.

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Orchestrate Healthcare   

Booth 4269

Contact: Charlie Cook, President
charlie@orchestratehealthcare.com
970.963.0251

Orchestrate Healthcare won the 2011 Best in KLAS – Technical Services award. Come speak with us about why our KLAS score keeps rising every year and why we continue to win Best in KLAS awards. Orchestrate Healthcare was founded on the principals of: honesty, integrity and hard work.These key principals have lead to triple-digit growth since day one.  Orchestrate Healthcare has also had tremendous success with our client feedback to KLAS Research. Orchestrate Healthcare won Best in KLAS – Technical Services in 2008.  In 2009, we improved our KLAS score by a full point over our 2008 score, and placed 2nd in the 2009 Best in KLAS – Technical Services category.  In 2010, Orchestrate Healthcare again increased our KLAS score to 94.2, but took 2nd place by 1/10th of a point.  In 2011, we increased our score to 96.4 and won Best in KLAS – Technical Services for the 2nd time in the last 4 years.  Out of 19 companies in the KLAS Technical Services category, Orchestrate Healthcare is the ONLY company to have 100% positive client commentary for the past 24 months.  Orchestrate Healthcare has a philosophy of “do what’s right for the client” every day, and the management of the company stands behind you to do whatever it takes to exceed the client’s expectations.The KLAS scores and all the positive client commentary reflect that commitment to quality.

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PatientKeeper Inc.   

Booth 1045
Mobile Health Knowledge Center booth 12928

Contact: Cristina Christy,Senior Events Manager
cchristy@patientkeeper.com
781.373.6378

PatientKeeper® Inc., the leading provider of physician healthcare information systems, offers hospitals and practice groups highly intuitive software that streamlines physician workflow to improve productivity and patient care. PatientKeeper’s CPOE, physician documentation, electronic charge capture and other applications are used by over 40,000 physicians nationwide, and run on desktop and laptop computers and popular handheld devices and tablets. PatientKeeper’s software integrates with existing healthcare information systems at hospitals and practice groups to create the most effective solution for driving physician adoption of technology, meeting Meaningful Use and transitioning to ICD-10. (www.patientkeeper.com; Twitter: @patientkeeper)

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Practice Fusion   

Booth 4074

Contact: Kimberly Okazaki, Marketing Coordinator
kokazaki@practicefusion.com
415.992.6462

Practice Fusion provides a free, web-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to physicians.With charting, scheduling, e-prescribing (eRx), lab integrations, referral letters, Meaningful Use certification, unlimited support and a Personal Health Record for patients, Practice Fusion’s EHR addresses the complex needs of today’s healthcare providers and disrupts the health IT status quo. Practice Fusion is the fastest growing EHR community in the country with more than 130,000 users serving 30 million patients. The company closed a $23 million Series B round of financing led by Founders Fund in 2011. For more information about Practice Fusion, please visit www.practicefusion.com.

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Quality IT Partners, Inc.   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Donna Eversole, MBA, BSN, RN, CPHIMS, Director Healthcare Practice
deversole@qitp.com
904.610.7933

Quality is a hands-on, technology-driven consulting company.  We assist healthcare organizations with complete end-to-end systems planning, acquisition, customization, implementation and maintenance including technical and operational support.  We specialize in assisting clients in transitioning from dated, expensive legacy technologies to modern, cost-effective solutions using leading-edge implementation practices. Our implementation professionals are experienced clinicians and financial consultants and have experience with all major HIS vendors. We view each assignment as an opportunity to transfer our knowledge and experiences to our clients’ staff.

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Shareable Ink   

Booth 7100

Contact: Suzanne Cogan, Vice President, Sales and Marketing
scogan@shareableink.com
877.572.7423 x802

Shareable Ink is the enterprise cloud-based platform that incorporates natural input tools, including iPads and digital pen and paper technology.   Clinicians can continue documenting in the fastest, most efficient manner. The resulting structured and clinically-encoded output populates the EHR with discrete data, as if typed in directly. Built-in analytics give hospitals and practices insight into their operations – from a clinical, quality, and efficiency standpoint.

Information Week recently named Shareable Ink one of 12 EHR vendors that “stand out” – out of 1,300 Meaningful Use-certified systems. Visit us at HIMSS for an interactive demo featuring our Physician Progress Notes with Charge Capture and Patient History & Signature Capture solutions. We’ll also have a special unveiling of our iPad App – you won’t want to miss it!  For everyone who mentions ‘DOCTOR’ at our booth, we’ll be making a donation to one of our favorite charities, Doctors without Borders.

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SRSsoft   

Booth 12721

Contact: Evan Steele, CEO
esteele@srssoft.com
800.288.8369

SRS is the leading provider of productivity-enhancing EHR technology and services for high-performance physicians—with a successful adoption rate unparalleled in the industry. Offered via the Unified Desktop™, the robust EHR, SRS CareTracker PM, SRS PACS, and SRS Patient Portal increase speed, boost revenue, free physicians’ time, and heighten patient care and satisfaction. For more information on SRS, visit www.srssoft.com, e-mail info@srssoft.com, fax 201.802.1301, or call 800.288.8369.

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Software Testing Solutions   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Maegan Scarlett, Marketing Specialist
himss@sts-healthcare.com
877.765.0100 ext. 1

You’re not still running those old terminal based legacy applications in your institution for CPOE, lab, blood bank and anatomic pathology – so why are you still testing them the same way?  Now you can achieve a predictable time, cost and quality for your upgrades. Software Testing Solutions’ (STS) innovative automated testing & validation products for hospital software systems including Epic, Sunquest and SCC Soft, deliver exhaustive testing quickly and efficiently, saving time & money while reducing risk, increasing patient safety and ensuring regulatory compliance. Contact us today for more information.

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Streamline Health   

Booth 2058

Contact: Rick Leach, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
rick.leach@streamlinehealth.net
513.794.7112

Streamline Health provides healthcare information technology solutions that help hospitals and physician groups improve efficiencies and business processes across the enterprise to enhance and protect the revenues. Our enterprise content management solutions transform unstructured data into digital assets that seamlessly integrate with disparate clinical, administrative, and financial information systems. Our business analytics solutions provide real-time access to key performance metrics that enable healthcare organizations to identify and manage opportunities to maximize their financial performance. Our integrated workflow systems automate and manage critical business activities to improve organizational accountability to drive both operational and financial performance. For more information visit www.streamlinehealth.net.

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Sunquest Information Systems, Inc.   

Booth 423

Contact: Kymberly Calvo,Marketing Communications Specialist
kymberly.calvo@sunquestinfo.com
408.702.1151

Sunquest Information Systems is committed to patient safety, workflow excellence, predictive medicine, and physician & patient affinity.  Utilizing this dedication, Sunquest proudly offers global diagnostic IT solutions that transform the delivery of healthcare for more than 1,400 organizations and 380,000 users worldwide.   Come by Booth 423 and discover the value Sunquest’s products deliver to our clients every day.  Experience Sunquest’s community-based outreach tour featuring our fully integrated suite of products built on technology that enables and supports business growth and operational efficiency.  Sunquest’s closed-loop collection and transfusion management tour will highlight solutions designed to virtually eliminate patient identification, labeling and transfusion errors at the bedside, in the ED or in the surgical suite. Sunquest is your path to the heart of healthcare.

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Surgical Information Systems   

Booth 1339
Allscripts Booth 3016
Siemens Booth 2423
Interoperability Showcase Booth 11000, Hall G

Contact: Emmy Weber, VP of Marketing
weber@sisfirst.com
678.507.1706

Surgical Information Systems (“SIS”) provides software solutions that are uniquely designed to add value at every point of the perioperative process. Developed specifically for the complex surgical environment, all SIS solutions – including anesthesia – are architected on a single database and integrate easily with other hospital systems. SIS offers the only surgical scheduling system and the only anesthesia information management system endorsed by the American Hospital Association (AHA), and both a rules-based charging system and analytics module that has been granted Peer Reviewed status by the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA). Visit SIS at HIMSS12 to see the latest in perioperative IT including anesthesia, patient tracking and analytics modules.

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Transcend Services and Salar   

Booth 4674

Contact: Donna Rhines, Director of Marketing
donna.rhines@trcr.com
678.808.0680

Transcend/Salar delivers clinical documentation solutions that are flexible to fit the needs of our clients. We offer the industry’s only physician-centric, single-source solution for advanced electronic clinical documentation. Our full spectrum of services and products include: full- to partial-outsourced transcription services, a world-class transcription platform, dynamic clinical documentation templates and physician charge capture.

Transcend/Salar products have highly-customizable physician interfaces that integrate easily with existing electronic medical record systems. Clients that utilize Transcend experience increased physician adoption through flexible solutions that fit the physician workflow. With Transcend/Salar, physicians and hospitals alike achieve notable productivity, financial and patient safety improvements. Encore™, Transcend’s powerful backend speech recognition transcription  platform and Salar’s transformational, physician-centric, inpatient documentation  and billing products (TeamNotes™, TeamRelay™, TeamQuery™ and TAP Charge  Capture™). Experience a demo or a presentation and see how you can benefit.

• Substantial cost savings
• Improved efficiency and significant productivity increases
• Expedited physician workflow and optimized physician billing
• Real-time physician query and concurrent documentation review  + Increased inpatient revenue
• Meaningful Use Stage 1 certification

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Trustwave   

Booth: 8805

Contact: Dan Kunkel, Healthcare Solutions
jvickery@trustwave.com
312.873.7659

Trustwave is a leading provider of information security and compliance management solutions to businesses and government entities throughout the world. Trustwave provides a unique approach with comprehensive solutions such as the award-winning TrustKeeper® and other proprietary security solutions including SIEM, WAF, EV SSL certificates and   secure digital certificates. Specifically for hospitals, IDNs, insurers and physicians, Trustwave Healthcare Solutions offer customizable data protection, and help safeguard PHI and address HIPAA requirements.      For more information, visit www.trustwave.com/healthcare.

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T-System   

Booth 4012

Contact: Ann Baty,Senior Marketing Coordinator
abaty@tsystem.com
469.791.2445

T-System, Inc. sets the industry standard for clinical, business and IT solutions for emergency medicine, with approximately 40 percent of the nation’s emergency departments using T-System solutions.To meet the individual needs of hospitals, T-System offers both paper and electronic systems. These tools help clinicians provide better patient care, while improving efficiency and the bottom line. Today, more than 1,700 emergency departments rely on T-System’s gold-standard content and workflow solutions. For more information, visit www.tsystem.com. Follow T-System on Twitter (@TSystem) and like T-System on Facebook.

Stop by our “virtual” emergency department at Booth 4012 to see and try our solutions in action. Find out how The T SystemEV has helped more than 42 hospitals attest to  Stage 1 Meaningful Use. Learn about how our new revenue cycle management services can boost your bottom line. Document a patient encounter with DigitalShare and T Sheets or try T-System clinical decision support. Answer a question about Continuity, our new ACO solution, for a chance to win an iPad 2.

We will also be demonstrating at the Interoperability Showcase (Hall G, Booth #11000) how the emergency department might contribute information that would enable a smoother transition of care. T-System Vice President of Solution Development Bill Hall will give a presentation, “Interoperability and the ED: Replacing Care Transactions with Transitions,” at the Showcase on Tuesday at 1:15 p.m. Additionally, two T-System clients will be presenting the senior executive session, “Emergency Medicine EHR Helps Drive Meaningful Use Readiness” on Tuesday at 11 a.m. in Marcello 4506. To learn more about these presentations and our industry leading ED solutions, visit us at Booth 4012.

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Versus Technology   

Booth 5852

Contact: Stephanie Bertschy, Director of Marketing
skb@versustech.com
231-946-5868

Versus gives healthcare institutions the power to locate patients, staff and equipment in real-time, and automate a multitude of clinical tasks. The result: optimized workflow, improved patient care and streamlined processes that set a higher standard in healthcare. Since 1988, hundreds of hospitals have strengthened performance with Versus locating advantages.

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Virtelligence Consulting

Booth 720

Contact: JoAnn Simon, Vice President
jsimon@virtelligence.com
952.548.6611

Founded in 1998, Virtelligence is a privately held premier Healthcare IT consulting firm that offers solution advisory and Healthcare IT consulting services to payers, providers, and life science organizations nationwide. In today’s competitive Healthcare IT marketplace Virtelligence stands as one of the most trusted Consulting partners in the industry. Our success comes from a solid understanding of our client’s business and access to the best Healthcare IT resources available. Our personalized approach has given us the competitive edge in providing innovative advice and world-class service to our clients.

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Vitalize Consulting Solutions, an SAIC company   

Booth 3338

Contact: Cyndi Cahill, SVP Marketing and Sales Support
ccahill@getvitalized.com
610.444.1233

Vitalize Consulting Solutions, an SAIC company (VCS) provides diversified clinical, business, and IT solutions for healthcare enterprises nationwide and in Canada. VCS’ comprehensive programs and services lineup includes system implementation, integration, optimization, project management, custom reporting, education, and knowledge transfer expertise. To facilitate clients’ strategic IT initiatives, our consultants first listen to, then advise, and ultimately strengthen their customers’ IT team. Primarily engaged with Allscripts™, Cerner, Epic, McKesson, MEDITECH and Siemens users, and the Ambulatory and Practice Management arenas, VCS cultivates enduring relationships by supplying experienced professionals who consistently exceed clients’ expectations. Since being acquired by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in August 2011, VCS is now able to provide expanded service lines to its current and future clients, ultimately strengthening our solutions. Please visit us at www.getvitalized.com for more information.

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Vocera Communications, Inc.   

Booth 2245
HIMSS Interoperability Showcase

Contact: Diana Cropley, Marketing
info@vocera.com
800.331.6356

Vocera provides mobile communication solutions focused on addressing critical communication challenges facing hospitals today. We help our customers improve patient safety and satisfaction, and increase hospital efficiency and productivity through our Voice Communication, Secure Messaging, and Care Transition solutions. Exclusively endorsed by the American Hospital Association, the Vocera solutions are installed in more than 800 hospitals and healthcare facilities worldwide.

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Winthrop Resources   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Dan Many, Director of Business Development
dmandy@winthropresources.com
952.656.7687

Winthrop provides custom technology leasing solutions allowing hospitals to remain independent of technology providers, to refresh technology when needed, and to preserve cash.  We believe that spending cash or bank financing to buy technology assets doesn’t make sense since those assets lose value quickly, require increasing expense to keep running, and need to be upgraded and changed to support organizational goals and regulatory requirements.

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ZirMed   

Booth 3638

Contact: Kent Rowe, VP Sales
sales@zirmed.com
877.494.1032

We’re ZirMed, a leading provider of healthcare revenue cycle technology and information solutions.  Serving 113,000 healthcare providers across all care settings who in turn provide services to more than 1 in every 10 Americans, we are a nationally recognized leader in understanding the flow of money and information in healthcare.  Addressing the entire revenue cycle, our offerings include eligibility verification, claims management, patient payment estimation, patient payment processing, online bill pay, online and offline statement delivery, innovative lockbox services, analytics, coding compliance,  and more.  Delivered via a SaaS model, our solutions are compatible with any industry standard Healthcare Information or Practice Management System, and can be used directly within the ZirMed domain or embedded within partner software applications.  ZirMed received a “Best in KLAS” ranking for 2011 from independent healthcare IT research firm KLAS, and ranked #1 in overall satisfaction three years in a row.  For more information about how our solutions simplify the complexities of payments for providers and patients visit www.zirmed.com.