HISsies Awards 2020 Winners
ONC publishes its 1,244-page Cures Act Final Rule.
This story will be updated as new information is made available.
This list gives visibility to HIStalk sponsors that are presenting virtual versions of the live presentations they were scheduled to offer at HIMSS20. Sponsor events scheduled through March 23 will be included.
Submit your event here. This list will be updated as I receive new submissions.
Companies that do not sponsor HIStalk can contact Lorre about becoming a sponsor or having their webinar promoted.
Thursday. March 19, 3 ET: “Learning Together: Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
HHS will apparently release its new interoperability rules Monday morning.
Details will be provided to stakeholders in a 9:30 a.m. ET conference call with Secretary Alex Azar, Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan, CMS Administrator Seema Verma, and National Coordinator Don Rucker.
From ItsMoreThanAGig: “Re: HIMSS20. As a HIMSS staff member, I can verify how incredibly difficult this decision was today and how painstakingly careful our leadership was in fact-gathering, deliberation, etc. As our CEO said on a call today, it is ‘heartbreaking’ for all of us at HIMSS, and that truly is the case. When you work your a** off for an entire year — sacrificing evenings and weekends away from family to build out programming, communications, logistics — it’s exactly that: heartbreaking. However, we’re optimistic about the opportunities that this situation leaves us with in the form of virtual presentations. Lots to figure out in the near future. But as a HIMSS insider, I can honestly say we really do put the best interest of our members and attendees first before profit or otherwise. We all BELIEVE in the mission of HIMSS and the power we can hold in numbers.”
From Jenga: “Re: HIMSS20. What will you miss most from the cancellation?” I will most miss being able to write about what I see and hear from the viewpoint of a normal attendee. I enjoy my normal routine of summarizing news and adding occasional pity asides or experience-based insight from the cheap seats the rest of the year, but I get just this once annual chance to roam around and describe what it’s like to be at the conference. I would always get giddy with fatigue from heading straight from the convention center to the keyboard and then staying up until midnight or 2 a.m. putting it all down on the screen sitting alone. I have fallen asleep from exhaustion at the keyboard a few times, but that’s part of the fun of living a fantasy of free-form, rules-free pseudo-journalism that can be simultaneously bizarre and informative. I may have to take a writing class or something to channel my modest creativity.
From Implore Me: “Re: HIMSS20. What will the impact be on the organization?” Brutal, I suspect, given that the annual conference contributes about one-third of HIMSS’s total revenue per my recent analysis. HIMSS made just under $1 million in profit in its most recent tax year, and the annual conference brought in about $15 million in profit on $30 million in revenue. The cancellation will likely spill over into its second-biggest revenue source of publishing. I don’t know what kind of insurance HIMSS carries for operating the conference, but I doubt it covers lost profits. There’s also the unknown downstream effect on HIMSS21 attendance and exhibition for two reasons: (a) the uncertainty is now obvious and those who feel wronged by the cancellation, for whatever reason, may carry their displeasure over to HIMSS21; and (b) exhibitors may decide, with a year off to think about it, that the cost of participating in the HIMSS conference may or may not be justifiable in their particular case. I don’t agree with everything that HIMSS does, particular when it strays into areas that don’t seem appropriate for a non-profit member organization, but it would be sad to see HIMSS marginalized by circumstances beyond their control. You have to have attended lame and now-dead competing conferences like MHealth and TEPR to realize how easily poor execution can turn into a death spiral. Ordinarily HIMSS would this week allowing companies to start begging for good booths at HIMSS21 with the assurance that the good ones would all be taken immediately, but I doubt that’s the case now.
From Chevy De Novo: “Re: HIMSS20. There’s a COVID-19 health concern, but just 11 US deaths out of 352 million people, and we do nothing about flu that kills 15-30K. The sky is falling even though Florida has just two cases and Orlando brings in more than 100K people per day to the theme parks alone. The ramifications of cancelling are far and wide. Startups were counting on HIMSS to jumpstart their business, and many won’t be in business by year’s end having spent half or more of their marketing budgets on this non-show. Non-refundable airfares, hotels, booth shipping and setup, ad revenue from journals who now have no HIMSS coverage to leverage ad sales against, and the list goes on. HIMSS didn’t have a choice because if it didn’t cancel, people would say they put profits first. Now they will catch flack anyway, especially since they are not refunding registration fees are instead applying credits to HIMSS21. I would not have wanted to make the call, but I would have said let the show go on, and if you choose to cancel your booth space, don’t ask us for money back. Now HIMSS is majorly screwed and may even face lawsuits, which could have long-term ramifications for the organization. It’s going to get ugly.”
From Back Home: “Re: HIMSS20. This hotel cancellation link appears to still be alive.” The OnPeak HIMSS20 refund request form is still online, but I don’t know if submissions are being monitored.
From YooHoo: “Re: HIMSS. It is reminding people about ‘not using their brand.’ Apparently they aren’t keen on ‘Virtual HIMSS’ and speakers and exhibitors trying to salvage the investment they made in HIMSS20.” HIMSS is right to ask people to avoid using its trademarked name in their unsanctioned activities, no matter how well intended (‘Virtual SXSW’ would be equally poorly received by the group whose name is being used by others). Luckily nobody needs to apply the HIMSS name to market their virtual activities. UPDATE: HIMSS has announced that it will resurrect its previous “Virtual HIMSS” efforts from years ago in offering some HIMSS20 sessions online.
From Ja Rule: “Re: FHIR Festival. Good joke!” Someone with a few dollars and a good sense of humor launches a website for “FHIR Festival, The HIMSS20 Alternative,” in which Ja Rule will take President Trump’s speaking slot and Elizabeth Holmes will be in the house. I would have added some caustic wit about selfie-obsessed influencers since we have those, too, and I suspect that some of those are being paid as they were for the Fyre Festival. HIMSS was probably wise to not take Fyre Festival’s “Let’s just do it and be legends, man” approach.
From Epic Trench Warrior: “Re: Epic banning customers from using automation software. Epic supports customers doing RPA work with several vendors, such as Olive. But Epic has seen some real disasters, such as 40,000 patient records corrupted by a vendor’s script that damaged med lists and took thousands of hours of Epic and customer time to clean it up. They have also had vendors use brute force techniques that create exceptionally high system loads. Epic requires the third party and customer to sign off acknowledging the risks, obligations, and safeguards. They also ask the third parties not to patent a combination of on-screen steps that simply mimic what an Epic user would do and then sue Epic or a customer if someone else develops a similar script. And of course Epic does not steal their scripts.”
The most recently used patient engagement technologies are almost everything except online or app-based education, telehealth, and care team collaboration (ignore the displayed percentages because the polling tool counts votes rather than individuals with multiple-answer responses).
New poll to your right or here: For those who had planned to attend HIMSS20: was cancelling it the right call?
Thursday was the busiest single day in HIStalk history by far, with 32,907 page views in 25,631 unique visits. I’m honored that people came to me when looking for HIMSS20 news, although I’m not exactly proud of achieving a success metric due to an unfortunate incident.
I published great responses to my exhibitor survey about the HIMSS20 cancellation. Lost in the shuffle of the cancellation was my earlier health system survey about coronavirus precautions – I’m still interested in what’s happening out there.
I enjoyed the later sunset on Sunday but was still feeling robbed of the extra hour when it occurred to me – not attending HIMSS20 will give me an entire week back.
March 26 (Thursday) 12:30 ET. “How to Use Automation to Reduce ‘My EHR is Slow’ Complaints.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. A common challenge is that a clinician is ready to work, but their technology is not. EHRs can be slow, logins not working, or printers and scanners are offline. Troubleshooting these end user tickets quickly is nearly impossible, especially in complex environments that might include Citrix or VMware Horizon. This webinar will present real-world examples of how leading health systems are using purpose-built technology with embedded automation and intelligence to proactively anticipate, troubleshoot, and prevent end user performance issue across their IT infrastructure and EHRs.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
HIMSS will develop a special virtual edition of HIMSS20 and is asking members which sessions they would like to see.
A new KLAS report on AI in imaging finds that use has accelerated, with nearly half piloting or using imaging AI, others saying they are close to deployment, and deeper adoption expected as radiologists and cardiologists begin to see the value. IBM Watson Health is most often mentioned as being well positioned, with Aidoc and Nuance gaining the most mindshare. Providers place great weight on the references of colleagues when making purchasing decisions.
Cerner Chairman and CEO Brent Shafer expresses the company’s support for HHS’s interoperability rules. He says,
The passage of these rules has become needlessly controversial, opposition stemming largely by businesses that have financial interests at stake. This is especially frustrating as most healthcare providers, polled by Reaction Data, predict favorable impact from the rules’ release. Now is the time to support the government’s role as an enabler of private sector innovation and competition in its efforts to ensure patients’ rights to access their information … We strongly oppose any business practice that willfully prevents the flow of information. We believe empowering consumers is the right thing to do. We welcome the innovation that will be unleashed by open and interoperable healthcare data. As technology advances, there are new opportunities for digital products to support providers and individuals in managing their health and wellbeing. We encourage the immediate release of the ONC and CMS interoperability rules because healthcare is too important to stay the same. And we believe that in a seamless and connected world, everyone thrives.
A reader says two Orlando organizations that might be able to use donated conference items are Boys & Girls Club of Central Florida and Orlando Day Nursery. Repurpose that booth swag, y’all.
AMIA cancels its 2020 Informatics Summit that was scheduled for March 23-26 in Houston due to coronavirus concerns. AMIA is considering offering panels and presentations virtually on the original dates. Its Clinical Informatics Conference May 19-21 in Seattle is still on for now.
An American Hospital Association-commissioned presentation to hospitals warns that COVID-19 could create a disease burden 10 times that of flu in the US, with 96 million cases, 4.8 million hospital admissions, 1.9 million ICU admissions, and 480,000 deaths (the timeline was not provided). Stats I’ve seen suggest an unfathomably rapid ramp-up, to the worst-case point that we’ll run out of hospital and ICU beds in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, CDC advises people over 60 and those with underlying health problems to avoid crowds, including traveling by air, attending movies and concerts, and going to church. The novelty of reporting the number of US cases, the number of states that have reported deaths or declared public health emergencies, and countries that are sealing off borders thinking they can create an infectious disease moat should be wearing off almost immediately as the new status quo. Let’s hear more about what experts are learning as they study more cases and how hospitals are preparing for the ample challenges they face.
The Far Side was right: we need this.
Weird News Andy apologies for titling this story “Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto” since it’s a Japanese name referring to China, but at least he welcomes our robot overlords. China deploys robots to combat COVID-19, using them to disinfect, take temperatures, and to perform dangerous cleaning and food preparation jobs.
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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My survey question: What impact will the conference’s cancellation have on your organization, in terms of expense, strategy, marketing, etc.?
Looking to the positive innovation that can come from this crisis. We all have our HIMSS routine and must get creative this year to turn this negative into the next generation. Whether it be virtual solutions, care management platforms, or new ways to connect and learn from each other, now is the time. New ways of working are essential. HIMSS in its current form may be the old model. Excited to design the future.
Will definitely reduce investment for any other conferences for remainder of 2020. It was laughable that HIMSS sent an email to us this week asking if we wanted to meet to discuss exhibiting at Health2.0 in the fall. Unlikely, on the heels of us wasting >33% of our promotion budget on HIMSS20. This is much harder on small to medium companies like ours. Which is why big companies could drop out, but not small.
I will be very interested to see how this plays out contractually — refunds, HIMSS points, etc. It would be nice if HIMSS found a way to reward those of us who remained committed up to cancellation — perhaps those who pulled out lose 50% of their HIMSS points, or something.
Rescheduling high value meetings is the first priority. Prior to HIMSS officially cancelling, about half of our meetings had cancelled on their own (and we were on the cusp of just pulling out all together) so that process had already begun, but logistically it will not be without challenges.
Figuring out what / how we will be reimbursed. Besides HIMSS sponsor / booth costs and the associated hotel costs, there’s also misc vendor costs that we contract for separately (build, hardware, set up etc.). I’m guess we’re SOL on those, but the hardest part is just not knowing what HIMSS will do as we await their “14 business days” to figure it out.
Generally deciding if we’re going to sponsor HIMSS going forward. For one, I’m very concerned about their long-term financial viability following this unfortunate series of events, and two, could this be the year vendor marketing execs decide enough is enough with the exorbitant exhibitor costs and take that $$$ for something else?
Frankly, we are trying to figure that out. We weren’t told yet what refunds are available for hotel rooms for example. We had an expensive event scheduled and aren’t sure yet how they will work with us on cancellation at the venue. Airfares are the worst –change fees at best. It’s a real financial loss.
Simply put, it’s devastating. In stark reality, some individuals at my company will lose their jobs. HIMSS represents a significant portion of our overall strategy, so the direct impact to sales and budget isn’t recoverable this year. I am likely to be one of those individuals.
Months of planning and work has been lost, with only limited elements able to be reconfigured for digital or virtual consumption within the small window of time HIMSS attendees’ attention will turn to #virtualHIMSS20, not to mention the lack of budget available to spend on the digital promotion required to capture that attention. Similarly, HIMSS is where we conduct a signification portion of partner networking at scale, which has been completely wiped out.
It is completely unclear if any sunk costs will be refunded and the likelihood of other upcoming healthcare conferences — such as ACHE Congress and Beckers — being cancelled means additional devastation for our company’s budget and ability to make sales this year. Because the cancellation came so very late, the vast majority of our expense cannot be recovered in any way and it’s unlikely new revenues will be generated in time to keep our 2020 strategy from collapsing.
While trying to keep perspective and recognizing first that we must do no harm in healthcare, today was especially hard and the situation is now bleak.
We’re rallying to host as many of our scheduled events as online options during the original event days. We want to make good use of the time and expense paid to prepare, regardless of sponsorship fees that are in flux.
BizDev outreach becomes MUCH more costly for small / medium businesses if we have to travel prospect by prospect.
It was tough to find out we aren’t able to share with and learn from so many others face-to-face in Orlando this year. That being said, we fully appreciate the willingness of HIMSS and its supporting sponsors and vendors to put public safety first, and ultimately, do the right thing.
One of the many traits I love about healthcare is that it fosters a never-ending conversation through seemingly infinite channels. Speaking for our company, we’re more excited than ever to actively participate in those conversations around improving the patient journey across all touch points for hospitals and health systems—whether that’s in the exhibit hall, through digital programs, or in the media. And when we do connect, we’ll have the “HIMSS20 that never was” as common ground.
Clearly 90% of the expense of HIMSS will be non-refundable and it will deliver 0% of its already-questionable value.
As a software vendor, IMO, the ROE on HIMSS is always questionable. We’ve been exhibiting at HIMSS for 20 years and ultimately decided that we could find value in the show two ways: 1) visiting with existing customers; and 2) guiding well-known, already-engaged prospects just a bit further towards a decision. The neophyte exhibitors show up with their order pads ready to go, thinking they will find new, qualified prospects and actually close business. With a typical 6-to-72 month sales cycle for healthcare software, at best new vendors will find a few folks kicking tires and they can fill the very top part of the sales funnel with the quality of leads likely not much better than an electronic form on their website saying, “Contact us to learn more about our solution.” Why else attend every year?
As a very long-term vendor with Round 1 booth selection priority, the HIMSS policy of “points reset” if you skip a year is the death knell for future years. Meaning, skip HIMSS once and you lose all of your seniority. Moving to the back of the line for booth location would make the entire show ROE much worse. Being on the main aisle next to the big boys dramatically helps in trying to find a few unknown prospects. As you often say, HIMSS is a boat show paid for by exhibitors and enjoyed by attendees as a chance to network. With the HIMSS organization so deeply dependent on the show for revenue, I expect there will be some very difficult business decisions for them in the near future.
We have mixed feelings about the cancellation of HIMSS20. On one hand, we’re disappointed that we won’t see our good friends, clients, colleagues, and competitors as we all gather to make the state of healthcare even better. We’re also disappointed that we won’t be able to showcase our latest innovations that we were excited to share and have spent lots of time and money getting ready to showcase. On the other hand, we’re grateful that HIMMS has taken this bold step to keep everyone safer.
The financial impact is high in terms of investment — both financial and the investment of time of our resources — all of which to date is not recoverable. We will wait the 14 days to see what HIMSS will do in terms of booth electrical, rigging, hanging sign, utilities as well as registrations and booth space. I suspect they will defer it all to next year, which is a great solution for them and cuts down on the administrative overhead, but for those already deciding not to go next year, this is not optimal.
It’s a double whammy. Lack of lead generation + costs we can’t recover.
We had spent the last 3-4 days “figuring out how to make lemonade” in terms of a smaller audience. Because we do a lot of business with other vendors, we had an opportunity to focus on those vendors (probably similar in size to us) that did attend.
Costs for sure we won’t recover: 1) Marketing contractor expense for the year-long HIMSS 2020 planning activities. 2) Cost of new banners / signage this year. Really glad we didn’t go with those expensive light boxes! 3) Shipping costs for booth furnishings. 4) Hotel / flights? We had access to a separate condo and were told that WILL be refundable. So that is some positive news.
That being said, I think it was the right call. I just wish they’d made the call sooner when honestly many of us felt this was going to be the eventual outcome. Those few days of delay cost us several thousand dollars on top of all the other unrecoverable expenses. Hoping that booth fees are rolled over to next year. If we can’t get booth fees credited or rolled over, we will very likely not do a booth next year at all.
We are ultimately happy with the decision to cancel. It was an inevitable public health risk, so we feel relieved for the Orlando community, attendees, fellow exhibitors, and our own team members.
The big loss from not having HIMSS is the industry impact. The conference typically sets the major trends for the year for health IT. It’s also our big opportunity to see diverse provider organizations face to face to hear their pain points and be inspired for innovation to address them. We need to take the momentum going into HIMSS20 planning and put that toward how we can directly impact this massive public health crisis.
We did not invest a lot this year, so not much sunk cost loss. We were going to present in a partner booth and am thinking about taking advantage of the open calendar to do a webinars instead. I expect we will have a similar sized audience with ability to share, record, promote, etc. So for us, small vendor, little impact.
HIMSS is the ONLY organization that demands full pre-payment of each exhibitor’s entire hotel reservation. We do not yet know what HIMSS and the hotels will do with these funds for folks who have not yet arrived. Installation staff (MarCom, tech) who are already on site are being told that, even though they have used two room nights– the industry-standard room night deposit– by checking out early, they will forfeit the complete prepaid amount. For a some of our staff, that is five to eight room nights wasted, at $175 per night plus tax. We are being told there is no option to reschedule use of those room nights.
No other conference group, not RSNA, not ACC, etc. instructs the housing bureau to instate such a money-banking policy. The money for entire hotel stays, not standard two nights, has been in HIMSS hands for months, behaving like a financial institution rather than a health industry association. This is simply an unnecessary hardship to foist on the exhibitors who fund these meetings, and an unseemly way for HIMSS to earn some interest.
Working to recreate the types of important feedback and research that we were going to conduct from a product perspective. A lot of this is solvable, but don’t have a great way to recreate the experience of someone walking up and having the type of unstructured interactions that HIMSS affords.
We used to be one of the top 20 exhibitors in terms of space (cost). We stopped exhibiting a few years ago and scaled back our attendees to less than 10. We have found the conference too big, too broad, and unproductive in generating real leads. This year for us, the impact of a cancelled HIMSS is likely some lost travel expenses.
HIMSS cancels HIMSS20 at the recommendation of its medical advisory panel. The panel advised HIMSS that frequently updated coronavirus reports from WHO and CDC were making it hard to predict the risk to attendees, plus many of those attendees are frontline healthcare workers who would be taken away from their jobs to attend.
CHIME events scheduled for next week are also cancelled.
HIMSS20 will not be rescheduled due to the logistics involved. HIMSS will provide updates on any reimbursement of registration and hotel expenses. Exhibitors will be contracted with further information about their exhibit contracts.
HIMSS does not plan to make the scheduled sessions available virtually. It is working with the White House to make the contents of President Trump’s scheduled speech available.
HIMSS21 will be held in Las Vegas March 1-5, 2021.
From HIMSSHappy: “Re: HIMSS20. Anyone know where I can get several thousand backpacks cheap?” Hopefully whoever was providing them can find schools in Orlando or in their home city to donate them. That’s a lot of backpacks. I’m getting reports that companies are donating their HIMSS20 items to Orlando area schools, homeless shelters, or other organizations, which is a great way to repurpose hand sanitizer, wipes, and other useful items. I will publicize the contacts for organizations interested in accepting these donations if someone knows. I would also like to shine a favorable light on companies that make these donations, so let me know.
From Denote This: “Re: HIMSS20. Imagine the economic effect on Orlando.” It will be significant, especially for those people who are in the service industry and are paid – probably not very well, possibly on contract – to staff the convention center, hotels, restaurants, bars, and meeting venues that were booked up with HIMSS20 business that now won’t need them. It’s not just HIMSS20, though, or not even just conferences in general. COVID-19 could be a bigger killer to businesses than to people with supply chain interruptions, reduced travel, lost work time, people staying home to care for kids whose school is cancelled, etc. Not to mention the inevitable stacks of provider bills that will be generated by any resulting healthcare encounter.
From Bellboy: “Re: HIMSS hotels. We’re already seeing fallout on getting refunds with finger-pointing between OnPeak and the hotel. I called OnPeak, they told me to call Hilton Orlando, they sent me back to OnPeak. It’s a complete mess, possibly newsworthy, and I’m sure thousands of others are experiencing the same.” I’ll invite readers to share their experience or suggestions.
From EHR Guy: “Re: hospital in Dubai. Decided to replace Meditech with Cerner. This is ironic since this customer had Meditech for years and only made this move when 2019 was the best year for Meditech in years with more than 30 hospital wins while Cerner lost 9,000 beds.”
Wednesday was the busiest day in HIStalk history by far, with my server refusing new connections at some points due to overload. The final count was 24,385 page views in 19,697 unique visits. Thursday’s total might beat it – I’ll let you know.
I assumed that I would eat the pre-paid expense for my Orlando Airbnb condo next week from cancelling on short notice, but I checked the site on the off chance that I might get a little something back. I was surprised to be immediately credited $821 of my $915, which was everything except the service charge (in other words, Airbnb kept its full share, but the host got nothing). Hopefully those who booked hotels through HIMSS or otherwise will fare equally well. I might have taken an Orlando vacation if I was paying for the condo anyway, posting write-ups and photos from the convention center and Pointe Orlando of the “what might have been” category. It would be kind of bittersweet to be there, actually.
I’m really happy I decided to end HIStalkapalooza a few years back. Tight contracts for the facility and band would have left me destitute next week, sitting alone in the House of Blues enjoying a one-person buffet, drowning my sorrows at the open bar, and listening to Party on the Moon imploring me to get up and dance.
We’re in uncharted waters in skipping a HIMSS conference, so I’m interesting in hearing from companies that were exhibiting – what effect will the cancellation have on your organization in terms of expense, strategy, marketing, plans for HIMSS21, etc.? Some vendors spend the majority of their marketing money and effort on the HIMSS conference and I’m wondering what they do now. At least the big announcements that always hit on the first conference day will get more attention.
Meanwhile, if you’re an HIStalk sponsor and are taking your HIMSS20 presentations virtual, let me know and I’ll put together a schedule or something. We’re also ready as always to take on new sponsors or webinar presenters given that the HIMSS20 won’t be providing the expected exposure.
March 26 (Thursday) 12:30 ET. “How to Use Automation to Reduce ‘My EHR is Slow’ Complaints.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. A common challenge is that a clinician is ready to work, but their technology is not. EHRs can be slow, logins not working, or printers and scanners are offline. Troubleshooting these end user tickets quickly is nearly impossible, especially in complex environments that might include Citrix or VMware Horizon. This webinar will present real-world examples of how leading health systems are using purpose-built technology with embedded automation and intelligence to proactively anticipate, troubleshoot, and prevent end user performance issue across their IT infrastructure and EHRs.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
The bio of MDLive CEO Rich Berner has been removed from the company’s executive page, apparently confirming his unannounced departure as reported here last week. The bio of board chair Charles S Jones now has the CEO title added.
American Well will announce Tuesday that it is changing its name to Amwell, which is what most people call it anyway.
Ro, formerly known as Roman — which started off selling Viagra and Rogaine by mail — a service in which it will provide 500 common generic meds for $5 per month, including shipping. That doesn’t seem sustainable, at least until it makes a big splash that results in someone overpaying to acquire the company, but meanwhile it’s a direct shot at PillPack, Walmart, and others.
Allscripts announces Veradigm AccelRx, a software solution for specialty medication management.
Urgent care EHR/PM vendor Experity hires Kernie Brashier (Payspan) as CTO.
Travis Bond (CareSync) joins muscle pain app vendor Fern Health as CEO.
Jon Scholl, president of the health group of Leidos, will leave the company to perform church service and mission work.
Wolters Kluwer will integrate its data quality solutions with SAS Health’s analytics platform to drive the use of real-world evidence for life sciences.
PerfectServe releases a new version of its cloud-based Nurse Mobility solution that includes a VoIP dialer for voice communication, creating a single inbox for all calls, secure messages, and integrated alerts.
Mount Carmel Health System (OH) will pay a $400,000 fine to the state board of pharmacy for allowing overrides to its medication dispensing cabinets that resulted in 25 patient deaths from narcotics that were ordered by one of the hospital’s intensivists. The doctor is awaiting trial on 25 counts of murder, two pharmacists were fined for verifying his fatal doses of fentanyl without question, and 25 nurses face disciplinary action.
The Economist says that COVID-19 is boosting China’s use of telemedicine, with some platforms reporting a tenfold increase due to full hospitals, fear of infection, and government encouragement. Some telemedicine vendors are winning over the public by offering free online consultations.
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Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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HIMSS announces that it has cancelled the HIMSS20 conference, following recent coronavirus reports from WHO and CDC.
HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf said in a statement, “We recognize all the hard work that so many have put into preparing for their presentations and panels that accompany every HIMSS conference. Based on evaluation of evolving circumstances and coordination with an external advisory panel of medical professionals to support evidence-based decision making, it is clear that it would be an unacceptable risk to bring so many thousands of people together in Orlando next week.”
The advisory panel said that risk could not be assessed due to frequent coronavirus updates. It also expressed concerns about taking healthcare workers away from their jobs.
This is the first time the annual conference has been cancelled in its 58-year history.
All CHIME-related events scheduled for the week are also cancelled.
A cancellation FAQ says:
HIMSS just updated its exhibit hall assignment system. There’s no easy way to see who is missing, but looking up empty booths against other announcements allows finding them in most cases. Some of those in the large booths (20×20) that won’t be there are below.
It should be noted that the cancelling exhibitors represent a tiny fraction of the 1,300 and that most of those cancelling are global technology firms rather than health IT vendors. Exhibitors are free to make their own decisions for their own reasons that go beyond the “bandwagon effect” of just doing what others do.
Those who are electing not to participate are no doubt performing their own notification to customers and scheduled booth visitors.
Accenture
Amazon
ATT
Audacious Inquiry
Butterfly Network
Change Healthcare (anchor exhibitor)
Cisco
Cognizant
Ctrl Group
Connection
DaVita
Decisio Health
DellEMC
Deloitte
EClinicalWorks (anchor exhibitor)
Elsevier
Fora Health
Google Cloud
Greenway Health
Hillrom
HL7
HP
Humana
IBM (anchor exhibitor)
Infor
InstaMed
Intel
Kyruus
Lumiata
Lyft
MDClone
Medicomp
Meditech
Microsoft
MITRE
Modernizing Medicine
NetApp
NextGen Healthcare
NTT Data
Nutanix
OpenText
PointClickCare
Pure Storage
Quil Health
Rauland
ResMed
Roche
Salesforce
SAP
SAS
Siemens Healthineers
SOC Telemed
Spacelabs
TriNetX
Validic
Veritas
Visage Imaging
Vocera
Wolters Kluwer
Workday
Zoom Video
I’ll add to the list as I manually look up the empty booths or hear details from readers.
Some vendors moved within the hall, in some cases giving up big booths in favor of small ones. It may be that HIMSS is rearranging booths to make the empty ones less noticeable and exhibitors choosing smaller spaces for a reduced staff presence.
Readers have told me (unconfirmed) that registrants from these provider organizations won’t be allowed to attend:
Cleveland Clinic
Intermountain Healthcare
Jefferson Health
Kaiser Permanente
MedStar
Memorial Sloan Kettering
Multicare
Providence
Seattle Children’s
Tampa General
UNC Health Care
I don’t ordinarily post news on Wednesdays dated tomorrow, but HIMSS20 interest is high and I sense that readers are looking to stay connected. I’ll cover just a few miscellaneous items today and do a full news post on Thursday as usual.
From Need to Stay Anonymous: “Re: HIMSS20. HIMSS asked our national, well-known company not to publicize or reveal that we aren’t going to HIMSS20, but rather to say that ‘we are participating at a reduced level’ if asked and without making any public statements. The concern is the optics – HIMSS can’t cancel because this is their main (almost only) revenue stream and having ONC and President Trump means the HHS people are forced to attend. The organizations I know will set up their booths, let them be empty, and attend only the panels where they are presenting and then leave.” Unverified.
From HISJunkie: “Re: HIMSS20. Could this be the beginning of the end for HIMSS? When all those companies that canceled look back in 10 months and see that not attending had little or no impact on real sales, why sign up for 2021?” Emails I’ve had with a few companies indicate that they aren’t pulling out only because they are afraid their competitors won’t and thus will gain competitive advantage. I don’t know if that competitive pressure to have a bigger booth, louder parties, and in-booth celebrities will carry over to HIMSS21 following a muted HIMSS20. Either way, I feel sorry for the HIMSS folks on the ground in Orlando who are dealing with day-to-day coronavirus updates, complaints from people who want the conference postponed or cancelled, setting up in-venue screening stations and clinics, and working through the security implications of having a sitting President kick off the conference. A HIMSS conference always requires a ton of work starting months or years in advance, but imagine this year with the added uncertainty of whether it will go on (which seems set in stone at this point) and the financial impact if it doesn’t.
From Not the Black Plague Yet!: “Re: HIMSS20. Rumors abound that payers are cancelling. If Big Tech and Big Insurance aren’t going and pressure is on Big Delivery to not go, then I think HIMSS is being disingenuous to small and mid-market vendors if their customers and prospects won’t be there. Cancelling or postponing is the right thing to do.” I don’t think HIMSS will cancel at this point barring some state or federal mandate, but they will still be left dealing with high-paying exhibitors who may not be happy with their ROI if attendance is off, exuberance is tempered by on-site health precautions, or attentions are distracted with new interoperability regs and worries about hospital employers and family back home. But I don’t think that preventing exhibitor disappointment should be the go-no go driver.
From Ponzu: “Re: HIMSS20. This is a needed call to take it virtual – it would be less cost and less time away from work for attendees, lowered carbon emissions, and of course infection related concerns would disappear.” The challenge is the bottom line of HIMSS since virtual conferences are hard to monetize. HIMSS tried virtual conferences a few years ago in a weird Second Life sort of way and they flopped. A conference without a cash register-ringing exhibit hall and in-person networking is really just a bunch of webinars that draws much less interest and money. People say they attend HIMSS for education, but even the in-person version would die out if it weren’t for parties, the exhibit hall boat show, and the chance to run around with colleagues and job-hunt at employer expense. The idea of a virtual conference is commendable, but not realistic under the HIMSS business model. And let’s not minimize that threat to HIMSS – if you like what HIMSS does in general, realize that its ability to continue doing so is highly dependent on offering a financially successful annual conference.
From USS MDRX: “Re: Allscripts. Stock hit a 10-year low today. How does the board allow this management team to remain in place when Cerner recently hit an all-time high?” MDRX shares closed down 8% Tuesday after the company reported losing $182 million on the year, flipped from black to red for the quarter, and announced significant inpatient attrition. They’re down 32% in the past year vs. the Nasdaq’s 15% gain and Cerner’s 28% increase. Ten-year performance finds that both the Nasdaq index and CERN shares gained around 250%, while MDRX was down 64%. The market cap of Allscripts is $1.2 billion.
From Chaminade: “Re: HIMSS20. Are you still going?” I’m still going. I see little health risk, although if HIStalk suddenly goes dark because I’ve become a COVID-19 fatality, then I hereby grant permission to make fun of my poor choice. My biggest worry is that everyone will be preoccupied and morose to the point that the conference won’t deliver even the modest benefits we usually see, although I will have plenty to observe and write about for those who are left home. I’m on text at 615.433.5294. I might need to find a Freddy Krueger glove or tie one hand behind my back to override my handshaking reflex.
I enhanced the menu system at the top of the HIStalk page with a more user-friendly floating version. This will allow me to reduce some of the sidebar items.
My unscientific, unvetted snap poll that was targeted at HIMSS20 registrants finds that 30% plan to attend the President’s opening keynote on Monday. An interesting 7% say they had already cancelled their attendance plan even before his speaking slot was announced, while 12% say they won’t attend the conference because he is speaking. I’m in the 10% category of not arriving in time to be there, especially given the resulting likely delays in local travel and convention center security.
Snap survey for health system employees: what is your employer doing in response to coronavirus concerns? IT-specific actions are especially welcome.
Lorre will be untethered from a HIMSS20 booth for the first time in years, so she is willing to drop by the booths of prospective HIStalk sponsors for a quick chat. Contact her to make arrangements. She is thrilled to be able to eat lunch and take bathroom breaks that aren’t dependent on finding visitors who are willing to cover our booth.
March 26 (Thursday) 12:30 ET. “How to Use Automation to Reduce ‘My EHR is Slow’ Complaints.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. A common challenge is that a clinician is ready to work, but their technology is not. EHRs can be slow, logins not working, or printers and scanners are offline. Troubleshooting these end user tickets quickly is nearly impossible, especially in complex environments that might include Citrix or VMware Horizon. This webinar will present real-world examples of how leading health systems are using purpose-built technology with embedded automation and intelligence to proactively anticipate, troubleshoot, and prevent end user performance issue across their IT infrastructure and EHRs.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
SymphonyAI Group acquires advanced visualization and AI-driven technology vendor TeraRecon. SymphonyAI’s several companies include precision oncology vendor Concerto Health AI.
I received these unverified reader reports about HIMSS20 attendance:
Interesting: the American Physical Society physics group cancelled its 10,000-attendee annual conference the day before it was set to begin in Denver this past Monday. I can’t imagine traveling there and then scrambling to find early flights back home. It’s different than HIMSS, though, in that many of its attendees are coming from outside the US, including CDC Level 3 warning countries.
HIMSS20 gets a mention in a New York Times article titled “What Happens in Vegas if No One Stays in Vegas?” Conferences drive one-third of the revenue of hotel chains that now have uncertain futures. A tech conference scheduled for next week in San Jose, CA will bar residents and recent visitors of China, South Korea, Italy, and Japan and requires attendees to bring passports that will be checked for recent travel. They will check attendee temperatures via “passive scanning,” have banned handshakes, and mandate that each attendee wash their hands before each session, apologizing in advance for the lines that will result. Analysts say Las Vegas is particularly at risk for conference-related business downturn.
I’m wondering about the “passive temperature screening” that this conference will use and wondering if HIMSS will roll it out. It has a lot of false positives and negatives from what I’ve read, but high readings just mean someone will be pulled aside for a manual temperature check. The real fun begins if your temperature is elevated there as well, when I assume you would be escorted off to an onsite clinic and maybe quarantined.
The leader of the World Health Organization team that spent two weeks in China studying that country’s COVID-19 response makes interesting points:
I missed that Atrium Health made an official announcement recently about its move to Epic. Its Navicent Health locations in Georgia will go live in 2021 and other locations through 2023.
Meanwhile, for something completely different, HIMSS defines “digital health” (much-needed Oxford commas mine):
Digital health connects and empowers people and populations to manage health and wellness, augmented by accessible and supportive provider teams working within flexible, integrated, interoperable, and digitally-enabled care environments that strategically leverage digital tools, technologies, and services to transform care delivery.
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Allscripts announces Q4 results: revenue up 2%, adjusted EPS $0.17 vs. $0.18, falling short of Wall Street estimates for both.
From the earnings call:
From CoronaHIMSS20: “Re: Confirmed that Intermountain Healthcare is pulling all their staff back. Our contact there said to expect the same of other provider organizations, both from a practical view plus the optics involved. Siemens has also told its employees that they have pulled out of HIMSS and that all activities must be performed remotely if possible.” A reader told me that Partners HealthCare is also keeping its folks home. Lumiata has also cancelled as an exhibitor. We won’t really know the extent of the no-shows until we get to Orlando because most organizations won’t bother making an announcement. There’s no registration refund, just a rollover to HIMSS21 registration fees, so even HIMSS won’t know how many no-shows to expect if people don’t bother until later. It will certainly be a different environment than in years past. The burning question: will MedData have scones?
From Humana Insider: “Re: HIMSS20. Humana just banned any non-essential travel within the US for the entire month of March. That includes conferences such as HIMSS, so I’m assuming their 20×20 booth will be impacted.”
From Critical Juncture: “Re: HIMSS20. My doctor advised me not to attend due to a chronic health condition that raises my COVID-19 risk. All of my requests to cancel my HIMSS-booked hotel have been rejected even though they say they are making accommodations (no pun intended).”
From Game Afoot: “Re: HIMSS20 exhibitor cancellations. You should squat in the vacant Cisco booth, planting your Smokin’ Doc standee dead center and see if anyone notices or cares.” I received zero ROI from exhibiting, so I’m not sure I would bother even if some cancelling company donated their space. Perhaps an impromptu HIStalkapalooza-lite could be held there in silent concert mode, where we all wear headsets and dance frantically to a soundtrack that puzzled observers can’t hear. I could charge for the headsets, “curate” the tracks as the hipsters say, and donate the proceeds to Donors Choose.
From Elucidator: “Re: President Trump at HIMSS20. Politics aside, should they have invited him?” Every conference would love to have a sitting President show up to validate its existence and the importance of its attendees, and I’m sure HIMSS has extended the same invitation every year regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. I’m hoping (but not betting) that political ugliness will be absent from both sides of the podium since the keynote is supposed to inspire rather than leave attendees arguing with each other. Trivia: HIMSS will now have had two of three impeached US presidents as their keynote speaker, a record that will stand unless someone holograms Andrew Johnson. Here’s my plea – for whoever introduces the President (Hal Wolf, probably), please just get him up there without the usual beaming, glad-handing, and nervous delight at being in the rarefied air of a celebrity who just wants you to shut up and let him speak. I hate it every year when someone from HIMSS takes obviously excessive pleasure in rattling off an overly long and fawning introduction, hand-shaking (or perhaps elbow-tapping this year) with an ear-to-ear fanboy grin, and then inserting themselves into a post-talk analysis or lame fireside chat.
From Derek Smalls: “Re: HIMSS20. Almost all related attendee expenses are non-refundable, including registration fees that just roll over to HIMSS21. Not everyone wants to head to Las Vegas next year, and vendors will go nuts if they cancel HIMSS20 since some of them invest 50% or more of their marketing budget on just this one show. Meanwhile, Orlando theme parks remain open and draw 100,000 visitors per day, European Congress of Radiology is making no change to its March 11-15 meeting in Vienna, and we’ve had two people out of 328 million die in the US from not very many confirmed cases.” It was just announced that ECR 2020, which draws 20,000+ attendees, has been postponed until July 15-19. For HIMSS, the common answer is “stay home if you aren’t comfortable with the risk,” but I wonder how that plays when your employer is an exhibitor and you’re scheduled to work the booth? I also question the “frequent handwashing” recommendation given the large percentage of “healthcare” guys I see in the convention center’s men’s restroom who bolt for the door afterward without a sink stop, including some whose pre-departure position was sitting.
From Bonhomme: “Re: HIMSS20. If a guest in the hotel I’m staying in becomes symptomatic, could they quarantine the whole hotel? What if an attendee is found to have COVID-19 – could they quarantine the whole convention center as in the Diamond Princess?” Beats me, although Florida’s governor just declared a public health emergency after two state residents tested presumptively positive for COVID-19. Let’s hope we’re better at treatment than surveillance because we’ve certainly fumbled that. Meanwhile, I’m thinking about all the employees of Orlando hotels, restaurants, the airport, and the convention center itself who not only have crossed paths will people from everywhere in the past couple of weeks, but who also in many cases can’t afford to miss work.
From DontCoughOnMe: “Re: Amazon Web Services. Pulled out of HIMSS20 citing COVID-19, but wondering if it was related to the Trump announcement, Bezos, DoD, etc.” I think Amazon implemented a company-wide travel ban before the President Trump announcement.
From Dr. Karma: “Re: [executive name omitted.] Fired from [company name omitted] for sexually harassing a small group sales rep. Here’s the email sent to the company.” It doesn’t feel fair for me to name the individual and company over a personnel issue, especially when the email didn’t specifically say why the person was fired. Still, he was indeed let go, an presumably for good reason.
I created a PDF version of my HIMSS20 guide that lists what my sponsors are doing, giving away, and presenting. Download it, print it, whatever works for you.
I planned my HIMSS conference travel this year around an “arrive late and leave early” goal, so I won’t be attending Monday’s events, including the President’s speech. Maybe someone can record it for me. Good luck if you are traveling to Orlando Monday afternoon like me since airports and local roads are going to be disrupted by the President’s visit.
HIStalk drew over 16,000 page views in 13,000 unique visits on Tuesday, the second-highest total in 16 years. The Department of Defense selection announcement on July 30, 2015 generated a few more page views, but with fewer visits, so you could argue that Tuesday was the busiest day ever.
Snap poll for HIMSS20 registrants: will you attend President Trump’s keynote on Monday? I’ve disabled poll comments since I’m not interesting in fomenting disharmony, just curious about how attendees will respond to a newly added session on an odd conference day.
I’m worried about how the opening keynote by the President will set the mood of HIMSS20 when attendees are already in a down mood over COVID-19 fears, new HHS regulations, and a scaled-back conference. Opening keynotes have always been collegial, self-congratulatory, and boring in having some vendor suit babbling on to a restless crowd that is checking their watches, ready to sprint to the exhibit hall opening in a feeling of unity and purpose. It won’t be the same if we start with oppressive security precautions, protests, attendees screaming in each other’s faces, angry heckling, and watching people get removed to the cheers of others. Not to mention that the open bar is next up and there’s nothing like alcohol to stir up the political blood sport. You just know that someone’s MAGA hat will trigger an incident that will end up as cellphone video news.
The list of announced HIMSS exhibitor cancellations that I’ve heard:
Amazon Web Services
Cisco
HL7
Humana
Intel
Lumiata
Salesforce
Siemens Healthineers
TriNetX
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Tools for Success: How to Increase Clinician Satisfaction with HIT Solutions.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenter: Andrew Kanter, MD, MPH, FACMI, FAMIA, chief medical officer, IMO. Dr. Kanter will explore how striving to achieve the Quadruple Aim (by focusing on the provider experience) can improve clinician satisfaction and population health needs while also reducing per capita healthcare costs. Attendees will learn how to set providers up for success with new technology, the potential unforeseen consequences of purchasing without the clinician in mind, and the factors that are critically important to clinicians who are using new health information systems.
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Healthcare Digital Marketing: Jump-Start Patient Discovery and Conversion.” Sponsor: Orbita. Presenters: Victoria Petrock, MBA, MLIS, principal analyst, EMarketer; Kristi Ebong, MBA, MPH, SVP of corporate strategy, Orbita. Does your digital front door capture consumers who search for health-related information one billion times each day? Do you have actionable steps to convert them into patients? Do you understand voice and chat virtual assistants? The presenters will explore the consumer challenges involved with finding, navigating, and receiving care, discuss why healthcare marketers need to embrace conversational voice and chatbot technologies, and describe how new technologies such as conversational micro-robots can improve engagement.
March 26 (Thursday) 12:30 ET. “How to Use Automation to Reduce ‘My EHR is Slow’ Complaints.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. A common challenge is that a clinician is ready to work, but their technology is not. EHRs can be slow, logins not working, or printers and scanners are offline. Troubleshooting these end user tickets quickly is nearly impossible, especially in complex environments that might include Citrix or VMware Horizon. This webinar will present real-world examples of how leading health systems are using purpose-built technology with embedded automation and intelligence to proactively anticipate, troubleshoot, and prevent end user performance issue across their IT infrastructure and EHRs.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Patient engagement and payment solutions vendor RevSpring acquires Loyale Healthcare, which offers patient financial engagement technology.
Ed Marx (Cleveland Clinic) joins The HCI Group as chief digital officer.
OptimizeRx promotes Todd Inman to CTO.
The SSI Group hires Diana Allen, PhD (Culbert Healthcare Solutions) as president and CEO, replacing Jimmy Lyons.
Holy Name Medical Center (NJ) develops Harmony EHR — powered by Medicomp’s Quippe Clinical Data Engine — to replace the multiple EHRs used in its ED, ambulatory, and inpatient settings. Harmony EHR, which will be made commercially available later, will be demonstrated at Medicomp’s Booth # 3559 at HIMSS20.
Nuance and the American Medical Association will run a pilot test to see if their combined technologies – Nuance’s DAX ambient clinical intelligence and AMA’s IHMI clinical knowledge graph – can reduce burnout-causing documentation burden.
First Databank rolls out an Alexa service that allows consumers to ask questions about commonly prescribed medications, including side effects and drug interactions, in both English and Spanish. I tried it this morning and it was pretty cool – I asked, “Alexa, what is amoxicillin used for” and it gave a nice summary, leading off with “According to First Databank …” I then asked, “Alexa, who is First Databank” and it gave a consumer-oriented summary.
Walgreens says a bug in its mobile app allowed users to see the personal information of other users, such as name, prescription information, and shipping addresses over a week-long period in January 2020.
The government of China requires citizens to use a smartphone app that decides whether they should be quarantined for COVID-19, but a New York Times analysis found that it also sends the user’s location and ID to local police for tracking. The Alipay Health Code app uses unspecified big data to assign a user QR code that is green (unrestricted movement), yellow (seven-day quarantine), or red (14-day quarantine). More than 50 million people signed up in Zhejiang Province alone, with one million of them getting yellow or red codes. Employers and housing units are denying entrance to holders of red codes and nobody has explained what it takes to make the red code go away.
In similar news that could make a great episode of “Black Mirror,” South Korea is deploying apps that use government data to show details of nearby confirmed COVID-19 patients, including date the infection was confirmed, the patient’s demographic data, and their location history. One of the apps issues a smartphone alert if the user gets within 100 yards of a location that has been visited by a COVID-19 patient.
HL7 withdraws from HIMSS20 due to COVID-19 concerns. First-time exhibitor TriNetX also announced that it won’t attend, as have Salesforce, Intel, Cisco, Amazon, and Siemens Healthineers.
Apple will pay $500 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the company of intentionally slowing down older IPhones to compel users to buy new ones.
Families in Australia who receive a government childcare subsidy struggle to cover daycare costs after an error in the country’s Centrelink social security payments system cuts off payments to families of children it incorrectly thinks have not been vaccinated, which is a condition of the program.
The COO of Cape Fear Valley Health makes an interesting comment at a gala of one of its hospitals, as reported by the local paper for some reason: “There are just awesome people here, and very resilient folks here, and you have been through a lot of things through natural disasters. And if you work in the hospital, you know that one of those is Epic, our new electronic medical record. That was tough as well.”
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Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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HIMSS announced Monday afternoon that President Trump will become the first sitting US president to deliver an address at its annual conference.
The President will speak at 4 p.m. on Monday, March 9 in the Valencia Ballroom of the Orange County Convention Center.
That Monday is the pre-conference day. The President’s speech will begin before the pre-conference education sessions have concluded and will precede the opening reception at 5:30 p.m.
President Trump will likely talk about interoperability in conjunction with an HHS announcement about its new interoperability rules. He is also sure to talk about COVID-19.
The President’s Orlando campaign rally last year disrupted flights at Orlando International Airport and created rush-hour traffic problems on major roads. HIMSS20 attendees who are flying in on Monday will probably experience delays, while Secret Service security procedures could impact Orange County Convention Center for much of the day.
Planning for a presidential visit takes weeks, Orlando’s police chief said before last year’s rally, so it’s likely that the President has planned to speak all along but wasn’t announced until now by HIMSS.
A HIMSS update on HIMSS20 and COVID-19 says that an expert panel of medical professionals will provide recommendations for its conference planning. Those experts will “further advise our evidence-based decision-making and to ensure the safety of the healthcare community currently planning to assemble in Florida for HIMSS20.”
Meanwhile, HIMSS announced that President Trump has been invited to speak at the conference, with further details following later today. A White House reporter says the President is planning to attend and time slot of Monday, March 9 at 4:00 p.m. has been rumored. That’s the pre-conference day, with the only scheduled all-attendee event being the opening reception at 5:30.
Health IT regulations have been published immediately before or during previous HIMSS conferences, leading to speculation that announcements will be made that week about the proposed interoperability rules of HHS/ONC.
Cisco withdraws from HIMSS20 due to COVID-19 concerns.
HIMSS filed its most recent coronavirus update Thursday, reporting a registrant cancellation rate of 0.6%. This may be misleading, however, since the organization offers refunds only to registrants from specific countries, meaning that most people who have changed their minds about attending would not necessarily bother to notify HIMSS.
Any potential cancellation of HIMSS20 would probably need to be announced in Monday’s update to allow time to notify registrants. HIMSS has not given any indication that it plans to cancel the conference.
Several companies that are scheduled to exhibit have recently cancelled their own user and sales meetings. HIMSS20 exhibitor Workday, for example, cancelled its sales kickoff meeting that was scheduled for March 2-4 in Orlando. Readers have said that Intel, Salesforce, and Amazon won’t participate, although those companies have not made any announcements.
Most respondents to this week’s snap poll – which is not vetted — say they haven’t changed their HIMSS20 plans, although 15% of respondents indicate that they are US residents who won’t attend as planned after all.
Readers who are epidemiologists or public health experts and are registered to attend HIMSS20 – will you still attend, and if so, will you take any non-obvious precautions? I’m also interest in hearing from employees of companies who have decided not to send employees to Orlando.
From Wizened Sage: “Re: MDLive. Changes at the top – chief medical officer, CEO, CFO.” Rich Berner is still listed as CEO on the exec page, but a reader said his resignation was mentioned on a medical directors’ call. CFO/COO Dan Monahan left in November after 10 months and Chief Medical Officer Lyle Berkowitz, MD moved on last month after a couple of years. Comparing the executive web page from April 2019 to the current version shows that seven of the 13 are no longer listed.
From Doc X: “Re: HIMSS exhibitor press release upload portal. My upload failed and I noticed that it accepts only .doc files, which were superseded in Word in 2003 by .docx. So a state of the art health IT conference is using 23-year-old information exchange infrastructure?” I’m actually surprised that the third-party service HIMSS uses accepts Word documents at all instead of requiring PDFs, where formatting is consistent and the threat of malware micros is zero. PR people sometimes email me announcements as Word documents, which even if I wasn’t worried about malware, would go right to my trash folder anyway because it means they are greenhorns. I’m not blaming HIMSS since the technology still works as long as the submitter is willing to do a “save as.” I also think there may have been a time when non-Microsoft word processors such as Open Office and maybe even Apple Pages could export only as .doc files, so this might actually be a commendable interoperability provision.
From Being There: “Re: ZDoggMD’s claim that patients can’t share their Epic data with providers that use a different EHR. I can say as a user of an Epic-enabled mobile app through my PCP that this is categorically untrue. The Share Everywhere option on the mobile app gives any provider one-time, limited access to meds, allergies, health issues, and immunizations. They can even write a clinical note to my care team.” ZDogg also ignores Carequality EHR-to-EHR data sharing, which in also being connected to CommonWell allows sharing information with just about any EHR whose vendor wants to support doing so. I wonder if the EHR that ZDogg designed for his failed Turntable Health had interoperability capability since he’s so passionate about it.
From Midship: ”Re: HIMSS20. What is the financial impact to registrants if it is cancelled?” HIMSS policy is that you don’t get a registration fee refund – it rolls over to HIMSS21. Hotel reservations booked through HIMSS are non-refundable, so you’re out those costs along with flights unless you bought comprehensive travel insurance, which may or may not cover you anyway unless you got the expensive “cancel for any reason” coverage or purchased before COVID-19 became a known event that is therefore excluded. Employers pay the tab for most attendees, so the paperwork required will vary, but you’ll have all week to complete it.
Poll respondents say the best way by far to get people into your HIMSS booth is to deploy friendly, alert reps (hint: reps who stare longingly into the eyes of their phones are neither).
New poll to your right or here, following up on the KLAS survey: Which of the following patient engagement technologies have you personally used in the past year? I probably should have excluded dentists since they are far better users of consumer-facing technology than their medical counterparts.
I’m looking for a few good companies that are interested in signing up for HIStalk webinar services and sponsorships. Startups get a first-year discount because Lorre decided that would be nice for the little guys. We always get more interest right before and after the HIMSS conference as companies are paying more attention to the comparative effectiveness of reaching an audience of actual decision-makers. Contact Lorre.
Geek gadget alert: I read that resetting your router occasionally will ensure good Internet speed. Mine isn’t in a handy location, so I thought about plugging it into a mechanical timer like you do for Christmas tree lights and having it power off early in the morning and then on again a minute later. I then ran across these smart plugs, which allow you to control the plug over WiFi with a slick app, with Alexa or Google Home, and even IFTTT. I think it even has as one of its programmable elements sunset time, so that you might turn on a lamp at sunset and then turn it off at 11 p.m. A four-pack costs just $25, they were a snap to set up in just a few seconds, and they are working perfectly so far. The only caveat is that they work only on 2.4 GHz WiFi networks.
Listening: The Equatics, high school kids from Hampton, VA who recorded a single funk-soul album in 1972. I heard them on Hulu’s “High Fidelity,” which I’m enjoying a lot (Zoe Kravitz is excellent, at least while I’m waiting for Tony nominee Da’Vine Joy Randolph to steal every scene in which she appears.) The soundtrack is all deep cuts and oddities from obscure LPs like this one and the playlist is on Spotify.
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Tools for Success: How to Increase Clinician Satisfaction with HIT Solutions.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenter: Andrew Kanter, MD, MPH, FACMI, FAMIA, chief medical officer, IMO. Dr. Kanter will explore how striving to achieve the Quadruple Aim (by focusing on the provider experience) can improve clinician satisfaction and population health needs while also reducing per capita healthcare costs. Attendees will learn how to set providers up for success with new technology, the potential unforeseen consequences of purchasing without the clinician in mind, and the factors that are critically important to clinicians who are using new health information systems.
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Healthcare Digital Marketing: Jump-Start Patient Discovery and Conversion.” Sponsor: Orbita. Presenters: Victoria Petrock, MBA, MLIS, principal analyst, EMarketer; Kristi Ebong, MBA, MPH, SVP of corporate strategy, Orbita. Does your digital front door capture consumers who search for health-related information one billion times each day? Do you have actionable steps to convert them into patients? Do you understand voice and chat virtual assistants? The presenters will explore the consumer challenges involved with finding, navigating, and receiving care, discuss why healthcare marketers need to embrace conversational voice and chatbot technologies, and describe how new technologies such as conversational micro-robots can improve engagement.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Health Catalyst reports Q4 results: revenue up 21%, EPS –$0.39 vs. –$16.33, beating Wall Street expectations for both and sending HCAT shares up 9.5% on Friday.
The Defense Department acknowledges – after initial denials – that a problem with a common login system has prevented military members, retirees, veterans, and their families from logging in to the Tricare Online Patient Portal and to its MHS Genesis Cerner system for several days. The ID platform DS Logon is working from inside the DoD’s network, but not from outside computers.
A Consumer Reports investigation finds that prescription discount coupon vendor GoodRx sends patient information to 20 online companies that include Google, Facebook, and a marketing firms. Most surprising is that consumers and doctors interviewed by the magazine somehow think that HIPAA protects medical information everywhere, missing the major point that it binds only covered entities and their business associates, not discount websites. GoodRx reacted to the unwanted publicity with an apology, the hiring of a data privacy VP, reduction in the information it shares with Facebook and Google, and new user options for opting out and deleting their data as required by California’s privacy laws. The company says it will make sure the third parties to which it sends patient data follow HIPAA standards, which I’m not quite sure I understand.
CNN resurfaces the two-year-old story in which a Facebook bug was found by health IT expert Fred Trotter as having exposed the membership lists of its closed, private groups – as was found with a breast cancer gene support group – to developers and marketers. Facebook changed its closed group settings, but denies that the existence of a privacy loophole even though it admitted that developers had access to membership lists, saying that users shouldn’t use its Groups product if they are worried about privacy. The Federal Trade Commission has not yet responded to the December 2018 complaint filed by Trotter and healthcare attorney David Harlow.
HHS will review the St. Louis Fire Department’s participation in the TV show “Live Rescue” following HIPAA-related privacy concerns about its depiction of accident victims in near-live broadcasts. The fire department accepted legally responsibility for any HIPAA violation in its deal with the TV show’s producers, an agreement that pays the city nothing for its participation.
Vendors of AI-powered symptom checkers and chatbot struggle to update their algorithms with COVID-19 information.
A small Reaction Data survey of health system clinicians and C-suite leaders finds that most respondents expect HHS’s proposed interoperability rules to have a positive impact. Epic users are more favorable to the ruling than those of any other EHR vendor. The rule’s biggest health system supporters are clinicians and executives, and while IT leaders were less enthusiastic, they don’t feel all that strongly about it either way. Respondents were pretty much equally split as to whether patients should control their own information versus hospitals and clinics doing it for them.
Healthcare in America: a man and his three-year-old daughter who underwent mandatory US government quarantine after returning from Wuhan, China find a pile of hospital, radiologist, and ambulance bills waiting when they finally got home. The government didn’t have a plan for who pays for being forced into quarantine in a non-government facility, and since the man has no health insurance since his China-based employer doesn’t offer US coverage and he’s lived in that country for years, he’s looking at a $4,000 expense so far. The biggest chunk of the bill, $2,600, was from a short ambulance ride provided by American Medical Response, which was sold to private equity operator KKR in 2017 for $2.4 billion in cash. He was coughing and his daughter was blinking excessively in a TV interview, which he would like to have checked out if he can qualify for Medicaid.
I had a double gotcha on this story in the Venice, FL paper. The first was that I thought it was about telehealth – it’s actually about architects for a new hospital trying out the design on employees using virtual reality. My second thought is that those cataract sunglasses that are ubiquitous among Florida’s senior citizens have gotten awfully large.
Paging Weird News Andy: Maryland police arrest a man who stabbed a woman with a syringe full of semen in a grocery store. Tom Stemen (!) told the woman when she confronted him, “It felt like a bee string, didn’t it?”
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HIMSS provides a coronavirus update for HIMSS20:
From Takeoff U. Hoser: “Re: UCSF Health. Has sent a letter to HHS supporting the proposed interoperability rule. The same organization provides de-identified patient data to Google for AI training of potentially highly profitable technologies, as was made public this week. That’s an interesting coincidence.”
From Hirepower: “Re: Allscripts. Online rumors say this is Day 2 of three days of layoffs. Any info?” I’ve seen nothing firm, although those unverified rumors say a few folks were let go from TouchWorks and Veradigm. The quarterly earnings report comes out Monday.
From Dollar Bill: “Re: COVID-19. What impact will it have on health systems?” I’m interested in hearing the financial impact that health systems expect. Most people who think they have (a) a life-threatening attack of COVID-19; and (b) insurance that covers their ED visit at minimal personal cost actually have; (c) neither. I think the biggest impact will be on people with insurance who will be left with crippling out-of-pocket costs for deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, out-of-network costs, etc. It’s early in the insurance year to be running up a big ED tab when your deductible is thousands of dollars. The US healthcare system is rarely your friend, but is definitely your enemy when your expectations of invincibility are expensively dashed. I expect all the usual healthcare profiteers – including health systems – to make pandemic profits. China’s telemedicine companies are enjoying a stock boom from recent coronavirus-fueled usage growth, so there’s that.
From YouBoob: “Re: ZDogg MD’s Epic criticism. He talks over the CBS news profile.” ZDogg’s music parodies were pretty good back in the day when his Turntable Health clinic hadn’t yet failed and forced him to transition into an Internet celebrity selling “sponsorship, speaking, influencer, and video production packages.” He wields the scalpel of dripping sarcasm clumsily in this anti-EHR video in which he attempts impish cleverness in insulting Epic, its competitors, health systems, doctors, patients, and CBS. I couldn’t stand watching it all, but his main points seem to be:
Snap poll for HIMSS20 registrants: how will coronavirus concerns change your attendance plans? I included a fake vote option so curious folks can see the poll’s results without having to make a misleading choice. Add a comment after voting if you like.
I’m always puzzled by HIMSS’s “Conference Deal” emails, which I think they rolled out years ago when Groupon was still a big thing. What’s the “deal” in being invited to see a booth demo?
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Tools for Success: How to Increase Clinician Satisfaction with HIT Solutions.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenter: Andrew Kanter, MD, MPH, FACMI, FAMIA, chief medical officer, IMO. Dr. Kanter will explore how striving to achieve the Quadruple Aim (by focusing on the provider experience) can improve clinician satisfaction and population health needs while also reducing per capita healthcare costs. Attendees will learn how to set providers up for success with new technology, the potential unforeseen consequences of purchasing without the clinician in mind, and the factors that are critically important to clinicians who are using new health information systems.
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Healthcare Digital Marketing: Jump-Start Patient Discovery and Conversion.” Sponsor: Orbita. Presenters: Victoria Petrock, MBA, MLIS, principal analyst, EMarketer; Kristi Ebong, MBA, MPH, SVP of corporate strategy, Orbita. Does your digital front door capture consumers who search for health-related information one billion times each day? Do you have actionable steps to convert them into patients? Do you understand voice and chat virtual assistants? The presenters will explore the consumer challenges involved with finding, navigating, and receiving care, discuss why healthcare marketers need to embrace conversational voice and chatbot technologies, and describe how new technologies such as conversational micro-robots can improve engagement.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
K Health, which offers consumers an AI-powered review of their symptoms and then paid telehealth visits, raises $48 million in a Series C funding round. The system, which was trained on patient data from an Israel health fund that is one of its investors, is rolling out a co-branded version for Anthem so that patients can “text with a doctor for less than a co-pay” at $19 for a single visit or $39 for unlimited chats for a year. The company says it has served 3 million users and is now available in all 50 states.
Spok reports Q4 results: revenue down 9%, EPS –$0.50 vs. $0.01.
Fax and documentation automation vendor Concord Technologies hires Christopher Larkin, MS (Elsevier) as CTO.
KLAS surveys 300 people about the patient engagement technologies they use and the changes they would like to see. Patients who see their provider relationship as collaborative value patient portals and technologies that allow them to stay connected without a face-to-face visit, while patients who are more transactional are happier with online bill pay, automated prescription refill requests, provider search, self-scheduling, and eventually price transparency tools. The patient portal is most impactful today because Meaningful Use money got them deployed, but patient adoption is limited and patients would prefer a consolidated version that includes all of their providers and all common functions related to lab results, billing, appointments, and secure messaging. Their second-most desired technology is telehealth. Most interesting to me is that money has driven the process – providers rolled out the minimum patient portal that earned them MU money for “having” rather than “using,” they aren’t about to share information with competitors, and they haven’t shown much interest in making themselves available outside of face-to-face visits because nobody pays them otherwise. They also don’t offer telehealth, leaving patients to use standalone services with doctors they don’t know, which is one possible reason for low usage.
The Providence healthcare system opens an innovation center in Hyderabad, India.
The inspectors general at the DoD and VA announce that they will begin conducting a joint audit of efforts by the departments to roll out an interoperable EHR from Cerner. Government officials insist the audit isn’t the result of complaints, but rather an effort to ensure that the EHR modernization will enable interoperability among the departments and private sector providers.
The VA gives a new planned Cerner go-live date of July 2020, although Secretary Robert Wilkie would not commit to a specific date to a House VA committee. Programming has been completed for just 19 of the 73 required interfaces.
In Canada, Vancouver-based RealWear partners with Chinese technology company Tencent to adapt its headsets for medical use, giving healthcare workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 outbreak in China access to hands-free, voice-activated software that offers remote viewing and connects to Tencent’s WeChat app.
MIT Technology Review announces its 10 breakthrough technologies for 2020.
Georgia’s lieutenant governor says it’s not improper that he talked about selling a health IT application to health and wellness platform vendor Sharecare, which is paid $14 million per year to run a digital health program for state employees. The talks didn’t pan out. Geoff Duncan is a former CEO of employee wellness technology vendor Wellview Health and remains a company director.
Wired looks at the ways Chinese radiologists are relying on AI from Infervision to screen for COVID-19 symptoms, especially pneumonia. Software originally developed to detect cancerous nodules in lung scans has been repurposed by hospitals that are overwhelmed with patients.
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Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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“What tips do you have for a first-time HIMSS conference attendee?” a physician researcher asked me via LinkedIn after her employer approved her attendance at the last minute.
I instantly thought of Vietnam war movies, where the fresh-faced recruit asks the battle-hardened veteran (he looks like R. Lee Ermey from “Full Metal Jacket” except unshaven and gaunt), what’s it like to be in combat? I’m not sure anything I can say will prepare her for the front lines. You just have to experience some things firsthand and do the best you can.
The biggest and truest cliché about the HIMSS conference is the “three blind men describing an elephant” analogy. The conference offers many tracks, experiences, and opportunities to network. Your HIMSS20 won’t be similar to my HIMSS20 except for some keynotes (assuming I go, which I usually don’t) and way too much time spent roaming aimlessly in the exhibit hall. It’s like one of those hipster-trendy food halls crammed with wildly different restaurants and bars that share only a common seating area. HIMSS20 will be 25 unrelated conferences that share only an exhibit hall.
Which is my first observation. The conference is really a boat show that is surrounded by just enough semi-educational opportunities to convince provider attendees that they aren’t stealing from their employers when they expense the whole junket. Exhibitors foot the bills, so it’s like a Las Vegas hotel – no matter where you want to go, you have to walk the intentionally winding path through the casino, or in this case, the exhibit hall.
I tell attendees to set their dials on three conference activities that compete for their time — education, exhibit hall, and socializing. Decide upfront what you would like to gain from each, hopefully with your expense-bearing provider employer and their patients in mind. What combination of new industry education, specific product and company knowledge, and fond memories of eating, drinking, and shouting too much would make HIMSS20 a success? Are you really planning to accomplish actual work there, or is it just your employee bonus with few strings attached?
I admit that I nearly always leave HIMSS conferences feeling guilty that I mostly goofed off, or at least used my time inefficiently despite higher initial ambitions. I always vow to attend an ambitious list of education sessions and to perform serious vendor research, but I end up walking zombie-like miles of deep exhibit hall carpet filling up my trick-or-treat bag with vendor ChapStick and pondering just how cheaply I value my time. Or I sign up for some vendor party in picturing a grand evening under swaying Orlando palms that sounds swell in winter’s dark back home, but realize once I’m there that parties really aren’t my thing and I’d rather feed my introversion some quiet time.
I’m too lazy to put a lot of thought into my HIMSS conference advice, so I’ll divide it into two parts. First are my off-the-cuff thoughts, then the suggestions of readers who chimed in at my behest (because it’s less work to ask them to come up with ideas than me doing it myself.)
Before Leaving Home
I’m speaking to my fellow males here. Get a pedicure the week before the conference. I admit that I was squirming with discomfort the first time Mrs. HIStalk insisted that I get a pre-HIMSS foot tune-up. She made me a bourbon and lemonade in a Solo cup that I brought in with me for liquid courage (which was actually pretty cool at 11 a.m.) She had her nails done in the adjacent chair and tolerated my trite newbie observations about why nail techs are always from VIetnam and how it’s odd seeing a roomful of women all staring longingly at their phones while having their feet worked on by another woman. But it was shocking how much calloused, dead skin they shaved off with the cheese grater and how my walking and balance improved in return for my $30, which included a sugar scrub and hot stones that seemed pointless but felt good.
Pack a backpack or briefcase. You’ll get a free one when you pick up your badge, but the one they handed out last year was useless. Your bag will serve as a temporary home for vendor collateral, which you take in a moment of either camaraderie or temporary interest and then toss into the trash when packing for home.
Bring a phone charger battery. Phone batteries drain fast when slugging it out for a signal in packed rooms. Use low-power mode if you think of it.
Wear comfortable clothes, especially shoes, unless impressing someone is on your list of activities. Don’t wear anything that won’t get you through 10 miles of walking and standing each day. Forget high fashion unless you’re working a booth or interviewing for a job — nobody will be impressed that you busted out your high heels or best suit for walking a half-marathon each day (literally in many cases) on exhibit hall carpet.
Bring business cards, especially if you are among the significant percentage of attendees who are hoping to get a better job than the one provided by the organization that covered their attendance expense (ironic, isn’t it?)
Getting There
Drive your own car instead of flying if you’re within a 12-hour car ride. I dislike the inefficient stress of flying for business, crammed into tiny seats surrounded by sugared-up, screaming kids wearing Mickey Mouse ears or testosterone-jacked tire salesmen heading off to their Las Vegas hooker and machine gun getaway. The elapsed time from leaving for the airport to setting foot in your Orlando lodgings may not be much less than driving, especially if your flight isn’t direct.
I think of driving as an extended meditation session, where I let Waze tell me what do while I reflect on life in general. I don’t worry about overweight or lost luggage, missed connections, security lines, and the mile-long cab line at MCO. I can leave the conference for home whenever I want, which is important since I usually bail out even earlier than I planned.
I hate milling around sterile HIMSS hotels with all the other nerdy, badge-wearing lemmings, so I always book a condo via Aibnb or VRBO. It feels much more like home or a vacation than solitary confinement and it costs less than a hotel.
Staying There
Hit the nearest Publix for full week’s worth of food and drinks. You’ll spend about the same as you would for one hotel dinner or room service. Then come back to your condo, savor the attendee-free quiet, and enjoy time in front of Netflix, the lake, or a local bar where tourists never tread (having your car provides options).
When you buy those groceries, get breakfast items and snacks. You’ll save time and money eating breakfast before you head out each morning and a granola bar will get you through the mid-morning, low-glucose woozies. You’ll save even more time and money by drinking your coffee while relaxing in your condo instead of staring at the suited butts of 500 of your fellow caffeine addicts who are ahead of you in the Starbucks line. Bonus points if you bring an insulated cup and take extra coffee to the convention center for more deliberate slurping.
Check out the HIMSS bus routes since your rental place may be near a stop and thus your chariot will await. HIMSS says the buses are only for people who booked their hotel through HIMSS, but the driver doesn’t care. Prepare for frustration, however, especially on the first day of the conference when everybody is headed to the convention center at the same and the full buses drive by without stopping. Going home can be a chore if your stop is way down on the list. Bus stops aren’t usually covered, so if it’s raining in the morning, call an Uber or Lyft to avoid starting your day bedraggled and wet.
Once you’re on your way home to your hotel or condo, take off your badge and put it in your non-HIMSS backpack to create an instant shield of anonymity. Breathe deeply as a traveler, not as an identically labeled conventioneer or obvious tourist. That smell is freedom.
Education Sessions
I don’t attend sessions in which any speaker is a vendor (sorry, “market supplier.”) I don’t doubt their commitment or intelligence – I have just been burned too many times by speakers who recited the company line or whose world view bore little resemblance to my reality. Seek them out in the exhibit hall presentations instead, where the audience is smaller, the topic is more focused, they can talk more about their company and competitors, and you don’t waste a full hour in a packed conference room. I sometimes enjoy those exhibit hall talks, which is rarely true of the big room sessions.
Choose sessions based on who’s presenting rather than topic. Interesting, insightful presenters can make any topic worthwhile, while under-accomplished slide-readers can’t save even the most contemporary presentation from becoming a snooze-fest. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, however, since the native language of some big industry names is “platitudes,” while some fearless no-names might actually express some original thoughts.
Attendees get audio recordings of most sessions after the conference at no charge, so you don’t have to physically attend everything. Or anything, for that matter. Just play back what seems interesting afterward at double speed. You don’t even have to climb across 50 sets of legs to escape a dud session. Try not to think about the cost and effort involved in traveling to the conference that brags on “education” that could have been distributed as MP3 files.
Sit where you can escape easily if the session bombs in the first five minutes, which is usually the case. Remember that the presenters had to submit their talk many months in advance, so not only is their content stale, they have over-rehearsed and end up reading their slides like a “follow the bouncing ball” monotone sing-along. I have no patients for presenters who write out full sentences as bullet points, read them in a grade schooler sing-song, turn their backs on the audience to look at the screen, and add zero value to just reading the PowerPoint printouts on your own.
Leave as soon as the presenter is finished since the Q&A attracts suck-ups who have no questions, only statements in which they attempt to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge. You’ll see them creeping up to the microphone before the speaker is even finished, oxygenating with deep breaths so they can at first opportunity rattle off a multi-minute pontification without coming up for air or asking an actual intelligent question (I’ve seen them spew their self-congratulatory nonsense and then leave the room before the speaker even finished answering them, seriously). Don’t try to make your way to the podium for glad-handing the speaker when they launch their uninvited monologue because you’ll get run over by the masses who are running faster for the doors than if someone shouted “Fire!”
Have a backup session in mind in case the room is packed or the handout looks less interesting that you thought. I usually just pick something randomly in a nearby conference room since it won’t disrupt my planned, miles-long route from one room to the next. Some of the best sessions I’ve attended were ones where I just stumbled into the first room with a lot of empty chairs.
Lunch
Bring something from your rental condo refrigerator or plan to eat really early. Every convention center food outlet will be mobbed throughout the hours that might be considered lunch, say from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. You will pay $12 for a chicken Caesar salad in a plastic coffin that is handed over by a clearly unenthused worker, after which you will sit on the floor in an unused corner of the building because every single table, chair, or flat surface on which you or your food might have been placed has been appropriated by an equally desperate attendee seeking horizontality. It’s the casino analogy again – vendors want you roaming the exhibit hall, not lingering over your sandwich and telephone on a comfy chair, so chair-seekers outnumber chairs by about 100 to one. On the other hand, feeling like an outcast grade schooler in the cafeteria is humbling, and quite a few attendees could use a serious dose of that.
Lunchtime frustrates me more than any other time during conference week. It takes way too much time, the food is mostly not good and usually unhealthy, I hate scouting for a freshly vacated seat at a debris-laden table full of people screwing around on their laptops trying to look important, and I end choosing the food venue with the shortest line and quickly realize why the crowds went elsewhere. On the other hand, one Orange County Convention Center food stand remains easily the best I’ve ever had at a conference, with food that is fresh, ample, and more cutting edge. Its existence is binary – it is either closed or packed with people – but I still think of that place years after I last ate there. I’m not telling you which one because longer lines will send me fleeing to yet another greasy personal pizza from a chain I would never patronize at home.
Exhibit Hall
Decide what do you need from your exhibit hall experience. Fake adulation from booth people who see you as either a sales prospect or an insufferable bore who is fun to jack around? A celebration of your admirable existence that allows you to earn a salary for wandering through neon gulches of unreality while fueled by free snacks? Actual information in the form of product and vendor research, at least while waiting for exhibit hall happy hour to kick in?
What I like about the hall is that whatever you learn there sticks. You probably won’t forget what you were told. I also like that I’m in charge of choosing what interests me and walking away when I lose interest (just tell the overzealous rep that you’re running late for a scheduled meeting, never mind that it’s 9:43 a.m.) Most of the reps are nice people and are just as bemused as you by the futility of creating a meaningful exhibit hall experience, at least when they aren’t staring at their phones in boredom or in anger that they have no chance of earning commission given the heavily non-decision maker HIMSS attendance. Just don’t let the time get away from you in wandering around. It’s easy to feel like you are networking and learning while high on carpet glue and salesperson cologne, but afterwards realize that it was mostly an illusion.
I’m a contrarian in refusing to schedule meetings with vendor people. Schlepping a mile to their booth can eat up more time than it’s worth. Just show up when you feel like it and risk that you’ll have to talk to a lesser god, knowing that it’s their job to be flexible when a customer or prospect is involved. They’ll find you.
Seek out the little booths in Siberia, or at least stop paying lip service to disruption and innovation if you are embarrassed to be seen in a booth that doesn’t feature an attended espresso bar and foot-deep carpet that’s crawling with glad-handing suits. Visit booths whose size is inversely proportional to the degree of risk your organization historically accepts — employees of risk-averse health systems (was that redundant?) might as well stick to the main aisles because there’s no way they are buying anything from people in 10×10 booths like I used to pay for.
The exhibit hall is a meat market for people trying to get new jobs. Reason: because it works, especially if you work for a vendor or would like to.
Social Events
I long ago decided that I’m not willing to sacrifice an entire evening jostling around strangers just to earn a couple of beers and to hear the most inoffensively white-bread music imaginable, but that’s just me. Social events abound, and listen closely through the day and you’ll heard about them. Some require a vendor’s invitation and thus a sneaky strategy to obtain one as a non-prospect. Vendor employees aren’t welcome to most events since nobody wants to pay to entertain competitors, which is why HIStalkapalooza was such as success even if it was a huge pain to manage.
I usually skip the HIMSS opening reception because it’s too big, too loud, and too boring, especially when the conference is in Orlando and the entertainers are Disney day-jobbers channeling Cirque du Soleil. Still, it’s like the clock in Grand Central Terminal as being a good place to pre-arrange meeting colleagues on fly-in day, and with the retirement of the old two-drink ticket system, it’s fun to watch ever-louder attendees getting hammered before they’ve even checked in to their hotels.
Don’t do anything that would embarrass your employer if you are wearing a badge with their name on it. Whether that means behaving or taking your badge off is your call.
The Last Day
I rarely stay for the final day since it’s short and usually pointless, especially since the exhibit hall isn’t open (and HIMSS without the exhibit hall isn’t exactly a thrill ride). However, it’s also a relaxing, no-pressure day and maybe you’re sticking around to avoid the departing masses. I usually enjoy it, although my expectations are modest. It’s tougher to find food venues, though. An even better idea is to take a two-hour drive over to Florida’s west coach beaches and eat a grouper sandwich on a restaurant’s Gulf-front patio, then leave at your leisure over the weekend.
Wear your most obnoxiously casual (and therefore comfortable) clothes on the last day you’re attending. Nobody cares at that point, assuming they ever did, and you may be heading straight to the airport. Now’s the time for shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and sandals since it’s Florida (change into warmer clothes in the bathroom if you’re going home to freezing weather). Plus people might mistake you for an investor — a valuable HIMSS lesson is that the startup guys who need investor money dress look like children whose parents made them dress up for a formal British wedding, while the people who actually have money look like they just popped in from a members-only golf course or a bottomless mimosa breakfast buffet.
Back Home
Don’t be depressed because you think that you or your employer are underachievers compared to the swaggering experts you saw riding the podia or vendor lecterns. Most of those people are harmless blowhards working for organizations that are just as clueless as yours. Being an effective, innovative provider organization in the dysfunctional US healthcare non-system is like being the tallest jockey. You are probably just as effective as anyone else, just less skilled at bragging.
Make up a convincing answer when your boss and co-workers ask you how the conference was. You have to make them think you were working as hard in Orlando as they were back home.
The Part Where I Get Less Cynical
Go home with new energy and commitment. If watching an A-Rod keynote or eating too many exhibit hall pastries does it for you, then that’s your business.
Embrace the diversity of attendees who are young, from other countries, and who consider themselves caregivers first. It wasn’t that way for most of the formative years of HIMSS.
Expect vendors and their employees to be enthusiastic about their products and services. Agree or not, you wouldn’t want them there otherwise.
Perfection is the enemy of good. Don’t get dragged down because EHRs, interoperability, the government, and your employer aren’t perfect. Don’t let anyone convince you that they offer something perfect, either. We are all making it up as we go and nothing about your careers is likely to earn a spot on your tombstone.
Respect the truly remarkable result of HIMSS people who spend years planning every conference so well that you don’t even notice the work involved. Nothing you will see or do happened without a lot of planning, arguing, executing, and monitoring. Every memory you take home was made possible by someone who sweated the details.
Patients make the industry, the conference, and your job possible. Be a good steward of the resources with which you’ve been blessed and always ask yourself, what would patients want? Find another job if it’s just another job.
Set up meetings ahead of time.
Search out patients or patient advocates.
Go to as many educational sessions as you can.
Make the most of interactions – in line, on the bus, while grabbing coffee, when attending sessions. So much of HIMSS is about making connections, sharing interest and becoming engaged with one another and the opportunity to do so is all around you. Follow up with a LinkedIn connection request or a Twitter follow.
Plan for curiosity. HIMSS is hectic and a pre-planned schedule will help you remain focused but do schedule time to be engage with last minute vendors, sessions, conversations that spark your interest.
Let vendors know you want to demo or attend in-booth activities to maximize your time on the show floor. Most vendors offer pre-scheduling tools via email and/or their website to facilitate this; use it.
You’ll miss many things. Sign up for post-HIMSS webinars and seek out blogs for what you missed and insights on this year’s topics- HIStalk of course being among the most useful sources of HIMSS coverage.
Many vendors offer breakfast briefings, lunches and social events, all of which are additional means of expanding your learning and networking without missing educational sessions.
Follow #HIMSS20 across LinkedIn and Twitter.
Attend your HIMSS chapter event.
Hand sanitizer is your friend. Apply frequently and liberally.
It has become a humble-brag for established companies, a hot air balloon ride for smaller ones. I genuinely think they forgot about mid-sized ‘buyers’ along the way, especially end-user doctors. It’s insular, it’s full of self-promoting blow-hards, it really lacks any actual value from almost any perspective.
If you see someone on jeans, they are probably financing most of the ‘cool’ startups you are seeing. People in suits have the real jobs.
As a researcher, just let us all know when you find novel technology that has actually conducted research on the outcomes / benefits of their solution. Because in 14 years of attending, I never once saw actual research, just a bunch of cherry-picked stats provided by a ‘beta’ client that was generously compensated for the data. (and yes, reduced fees for a product is compensation, IMO).
The American Medical Association releases its Patient Records Electronic Access Playbook, which aims to dispel HIPAA myths and help practices understand their patient records request obligations. Some points:
From Concerned Vendor: “Re: HIMSS20. Companies across the globe are pulling out of industry conferences. The vendor and provider community needs to put pressure on the HIMSS organizers to cancel or at least postpone HIMSS20.” I don’t think that cancelling HIMSS20 two weeks out is logical, from either a public health or a business point of view. I’ll defer to epidemiologic experts, but avoiding public gatherings and using US border security as a protective moat probably won’t help much (HIMSS says less than 1% of registrants are from countries that are under a travel ban). It’s late in the game to consider cancelling or rescheduling when it’s a domestic trip for the majority of attendees and the odds of problems are low. The conference is the primary money generator for HIMSS; people have already paid for hotel rooms, flights, and other non-refundable travel items; and conferences stay on schedule during much deadlier epidemics, such as the flu. There’s no way HIMSS20 could simply be rescheduled given the years of planning required. HIMSS should:
Meanwhile, feel free to cast unpleasant looks at anyone who sneezes or coughs without covering – droplet exposure is the biggest risk. Skip the theme parks if you have global paranoia. The latest sitreps show that we’ve had only a few dozen COVID-19 cases in the US, nearly all of those being returnees from Diamond Princess or recent trips to China, and nobody has died. Meanwhile, the media-unsexy plain old flu has this season caused 29 million US illness episodes, 280,000 hospitalizations, 16,000 deaths, and zero calls to cancel HIMSS20. Perhaps a measured, long-term approach would be to question whether the cost, effort, and carbon footprint involved in dragging people to a specific building to talk about technology (such as remote visits and online digital services, ironically) are worth it even without outbreak threats.
From Illuminati: “Re: Atrium Health. All of Atrium’s primary enterprise (Carolina Medical Center and most of Atrium-owned facilities) have been using Cerner Millennium EMR for years and added Epic revenue cycle about four years ago. That last piece, allowing Atrium to use revenue cycle without Epic clinicals, is unique. It allowed Atrium to buy licenses to all Epic products, implement the full suite in some managed facilities, and then offer it to Navicent. It was also attractive to the full primary enterprise. It’s a big loss for Cerner, but it took a few years and Epic was already more widely deployed on the acute care side than Cerner.”
A reader who is a physician, researcher, and professor got last-minute approval to attend the upcoming HIMSS conference as a first-timer. She messaged me for any tips I might have. Your assignment is twofold: (a) send me useful, lesser-known tips — we all know to wear comfortable shoes – of the type that clickbait sites might refer to as “hacks,” especially anything that is pertinent to her specific background; and (b) let me know if you want to extend an invitation to her for whatever velvet ropes you control, be they social or educational, that would enrich her experience. I’ll write up the tips I receive plus my own in the next day or two. I admit that my ego soared in an impostor syndrome kind of way when I saw her wealth of clinical credentials on LinkedIn along with her being in the HIStalk Fan Club group that reader Dann set up forever ago (and noticing that the group has 3,700 members).
Give me some advice here. A reader alerted me to a potential conflict of interest with large, state-funded RFP in which Epic consultants are to be engaged. The health system hired Vendor A in an advisory role to manage the selection, and quite a few of Vendor A’s people were involved in various committees and oversight groups. Some of Vendor A’s employees are actually 1099 contractors who work for other companies that are bidding for the Epic work. Neither Vendor A nor the health system’s compliance department have responded to my inquiries, but my question is this – what line would you draw in describing a situation like this as either unethical or illegal versus just how business works when taxpayer money is involved? I assume (maybe incorrectly) that Vendor A doesn’t have people on the selection team and won’t be allowed to bid on the services work, but is sending the employees of bidding companies on site while wearing Vendor A badges unusual? I’ve seen the bidder list and quite a few companies have a vested interest in the outcome.
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Tools for Success: How to Increase Clinician Satisfaction with HIT Solutions.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenter: Andrew Kanter, MD, MPH, FACMI, FAMIA, chief medical officer, IMO. Dr. Kanter will explore how striving to achieve the Quadruple Aim (by focusing on the provider experience) can improve clinician satisfaction and population health needs while also reducing per capita healthcare costs. Attendees will learn how to set providers up for success with new technology, the potential unforeseen consequences of purchasing without the clinician in mind, and the factors that are critically important to clinicians who are using new health information systems.
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Healthcare Digital Marketing: Jump-Start Patient Discovery and Conversion.” Sponsor: Orbita. Presenters: Victoria Petrock, MBA, MLIS, principal analyst, EMarketer; Kristi Ebong, MBA, MPH, SVP of corporate strategy, Orbita. Does your digital front door capture consumers who search for health-related information one billion times each day? Do you have actionable steps to convert them into patients? Do you understand voice and chat virtual assistants? The presenters will explore the consumer challenges involved with finding, navigating, and receiving care, discuss why healthcare marketers need to embrace conversational voice and chatbot technologies, and describe how new technologies such as conversational micro-robots can improve engagement.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Bloomberg Businessweek visits a Walmart Health center in Georgia, which offers a $30 medical checkup, $25 teeth cleaning, and $1 per minute psychological counseling, with prices clearly displayed in the 12-room, 6,500 square foot facility that has its own entrance. Walmart changed direction after opening just 19 Care Clinic urgent care centers because they provide little value, especially for chronic conditions. It accepts insurance, but patients often save money by paying cash given high deductibles and co-pays. Beyond medical, dental, and eye care, the center also performs X-rays, hearing checks, and lab tests. Walmart says patient volume is running above expectations and that it has lowered costs by 40% by reducing “all that administrative baloney,” with one of its doctors saying that paperwork takes her 25% less time than in hospitals.
Continuous monitoring solutions vendor EarlySense hires John Dragovits (Allscripts) as SVP of strategic partnerships.
Price transparency and provider rating vendor Healthcare Bluebook hires Scott Paddock (GuideWell Connect) as CEO. He replaces founder Jeff Rice, who will become executive chairman.
Nuance announces GA of Dragon Ambient Experience (DAX), its “exam room of the future” where “clinical documentation writes itself.” Dig deeper by reading my interview with Nuance CTO Joe Petro a few weeks back, including the interesting tidbit – the company got the idea 5-6 years ago from Epic President Carl Dvorak, who “floated the notion of a room being able to listen.”
Prepared Health renames itself to Dina, the name it previously used for its digital assistant that analyzes patient assessments from home and makes evidence-based recommendations. The company is a first-time exhibitor at HIMSS20 and will co-present with Jefferson Health. I interviewed CEO Ashish Shah — who worked a long time at Medicity before co-founding what is now Dina in 2015 — last year about the concept of “healthcare with no address.”
Medhost adds COVID-19 screening tools to its systems, including travel-related screening questions in its Enterprise EHR and EDIS.
Allscripts announces GA of TouchWorks EHR 20.0.
Waystar launches Hubble, an AI and robotic process automation platform that will reduce the labor required for revenue cycle management. It is being used in 10 of its RCM solutions so far.
Apple and drug company Johnson & Johnson launch a study to see if people on Medicare who use the Apple Watch have a lower risk of stroke via early detection of atrial fibrillation. It’s a two-year study, so expect the same lack of conclusive results that have plagued similar studies because their study group wasn’t representative and dropout rates were high, not to mention that Android phone users are excluded even though they outnumber the IPhone crowd.
ONC publishes its health IT priorities for research (full report).
CBS runs a flattering, consumer-oriented review of “Epic, the software company that’s changed the sharing of medical records (including, probably, yours.” They got nice shots from a campus visit, interviews and demos from staff, and a rare on-camera extended interview with the “76-year-old genius behind Epic” Judy Faulkner, who “built this curious place in her own curious image.” It’s a decent overview, Judy came across well, and the look back at the era of paper records flying around a hospital via pneumatic tube is fun. Judy also mentioned the “Hey, Epic” voice assistant that the company is developing.
A Twitter war erupts between UK healthcare chatbot and doctor referral vendor Babylon Health and user @DrMurphy11 (oncologist David Watkins, MBBS), who called out problems with its symptom checker that offers advice for chest pain and other conditions. Babylon Health, which was founded by an investment banker, says its “anonymous detractor” (who has since revealed himself) found just 20 serious errors in 2,400 tests in “trying to trick our AI.” Interestingly, the company footnoted its document with its standard warning that “Our AI tools provide information only and do not provide a medical diagnosis, nor are they a substitute for a doctor.” The company has apparently expanded to the US.
Healthcare in America. A Miami guy fresh off a China work trip develops flu-like symptoms and heads to the hospital ED. He asks them to run a flu test first since he had purchased non-ACA (aka “junk”) insurance as allowed by White House policy changes and didn’t want to run up extra charges. The blood draw and nasal swab proved that he had the plain old flu. He then received a bill for $1,400 from his insurance company, which discounted the hospital’s charge of $3,270 on the condition that he provide three years’ worth of medical records to prove that his flu wasn’t a pre-existing condition. Meanwhile, the hospital says more bills are headed his way but couldn’t explain when or for what (like $3,270 wasn’t enough for a couple of low-cost items). The big finish is this – he works for a medical device company that doesn’t offer its health insurance to its employees.
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HHS and ONC publish “Strategy on Reducing Regulatory and Administrative Burdens Relating to the Use of Health IT and EHRs,” meeting the requirement of the 21st Century Cures Act that HHS address government-imposed burdens on EHR use.
HHS was looking at strategies that could be achieved in 3-5 years and that HHS could implement under its existing or expanded authority or as a influencer.
I noted these specific items, although it’s not clear how HHS and ONC see themselves being involved beyond calling out the status quo as undesirable:
CMS Administration Seema Verma said in announcing the report, “The taxpayers made a massive investment in EHRs with the expectation that it would solve the many issues that plagued paper-bound health records. Unfortunately, as this report shows, in all too many cases, the cure has been worse than the disease. Twenty years into the 21st century, it’s unacceptable that the application of health IT still struggles to provide ready access to medical records, access that might mean the difference between life and death. The report’s recommendations provide valuable guidance on how to minimize EHR burden as we seek to fulfill the promise of an interoperable health system.”
From No More Tangles: “Re: Atrium Health. It’s a bigger deal than the commenter says, pretty much a rip-and-replace. They are Cerner’s first and largest hosted customer and this was a big decision for them even beyond acquiring Wake Forest. They are almost entirely Cerner, with some miscellaneous Meditech and old McKesson. They were using Epic only for professional billing in a subset of their physician practices. Navicent also had an urgency to move and passed on Cerner for their long-term future and chose Epic.” Atrium Health released its 2019 financial report last week that showed a $284 million profit on $7.49 billion in operating revenue (not including that of its regional partners) and CEO compensation of $7.25 million.
We’re in that pre-HIMSS quiet period, where companies – wisely or not – hold their announcements for opening day, when they are likely to get lost among the others. It will therefore be light reading today.
HIStalk sponsors sent some cool write-ups for my HIMSS guide – descriptions of what their company does, what they will be demonstrating, fun giveaways and donations to charities, and in-booth events such as whiskey tastings, happy hours, podcasts, presentations, and Google Cloud’s “Build with a Googler.” I’ll make a downloadable PDF shortly. I’ve done zero prep for the conference, but I’m starting this weekend by making a list of booths I want to visit from this list of 60 or so. You can text me during the conference at 615.433.5294.
Lorre wants to spice up our webinar calendar with new entries, so contact her and you’ll get a pre-HIMSS deal. Another sponsor thing I just remembered: fill out the form to be featured in my reader-requested Sponsor Spotlight. Hey, it’s free, so why wouldn’t you?
Most poll respondents have little faith in organizations keeping their health information private, but some trust medical practices and health systems.
New poll to your right or here: What would most entice you to interact with a HIMSS exhibitor that you don’t know much about?
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Tools for Success: How to Increase Clinician Satisfaction with HIT Solutions.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenter: Andrew Kanter, MD, MPH, FACMI, FAMIA, chief medical officer, IMO. Dr. Kanter will explore how striving to achieve the Quadruple Aim (by focusing on the provider experience) can improve clinician satisfaction and population health needs while also reducing per capita healthcare costs. Attendees will learn how to set providers up for success with new technology, the potential unforeseen consequences of purchasing without the clinician in mind, and the factors that are critically important to clinicians who are using new health information systems.
March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Healthcare Digital Marketing: Jump-Start Patient Discovery and Conversion.” Sponsor: Orbita. Presenters: Victoria Petrock, MBA, MLIS, principal analyst, EMarketer; Kristi Ebong, MBA, MPH, SVP of corporate strategy, Orbita. Does your digital front door capture consumers who search for health-related information one billion times each day? Do you have actionable steps to convert them into patients? Do you understand voice and chat virtual assistants? The presenters will explore the consumer challenges involved with finding, navigating, and receiving care, discuss why healthcare marketers need to embrace conversational voice and chatbot technologies, and describe how new technologies such as conversational micro-robots can improve engagement.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
World Wide Technology promotes Justin Collier, MD to chief healthcare advisor.
Queen’s Health Systems (HI) notifies 2,900 patients that their information was exposed by an employee who emailed an attachment to the wrong address.
A health reporter for The Atlantic writes up “the Uber for BS” of corporate buzzwords, calling out “stakeholders,” deep dives,” “optics,” “growth hacking,” “value-add,” and “synergy. She quotes an author who says people use buzzwords for the same reason they wear ties or Ann Taylor clothes to the office – to tell the world they are working. An anthropologist takes a more cynical view, saying that people use buzzwords when they aren’t really doing anything. Stay tuned for the HISsies “most overused buzzword winner – will it be “artificial intelligence,” “social determinants of health,” “cloud,” or “disruption?” I’ll circle back shortly after I’ve leveraged consensus in preparation for moving the needle among thought leaders.
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Larry Tesler, who invented such computer functions as cut-copy-paste and search-replace in the early GUI days at Xerox, is Control-X’ed at 74.
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