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In This Issue:  Letter From The President Chicago HIMSS Board Officers Nursing Informatics Sponsorship RHIO Liaison Update Education Committee Financial ReportLetter From The President HIMSS 2008 – IT’s a Small World After All I always love going to Disney … DisneyWorld, DisneyLand, even the Disney Store! Why? I guess I’m still a kid at heart (just ask my wife and kids) and I really love the way they can transport you to a ‘whole new world.’ Being in Orlando for HIMSS at the Orange County Convention Center, I was close enough to get that feeling again. Plus, there were several vendor events at Downtown Disney and at Epcot. Seriously, you can’t get through the Orlando airport without catching the fever. Speaking of HIMSS, it was bigger (and better?) than ever with a record-breaking 28,400 attendees and over 900 vendor exhibitors. There were over 300 educational sessions and keynote addresses by former Senator Bill Frist, MD; Secretary of HHS Mark Leavitt with ONCHIT Chair Robert Kolodner, MD; Steve Case, Chairman/CEO of Revolution Health; Eric Schmidt, Chairman/CEO of Google; and Steven Levitt, professor and author of Freakonomics. HIMSS even has a new theme song that was performed at the opening ceremonies called “This is Our Time” (not a Disney production). As big as it was, and anyone that walked the exhibit floor knows how loooong the hall went on, the main reason I go is to see people in the industry I only typically see once a year and to catch-up. I am always amazed how I can walk down the aisles and see so many new exhibitors. More amazing though is when I approach their booths, I many times see a familiar face. Then it’s “I thought you were with xyz company” and “yeah I got a call about this great new opportunity and …” You know the drill. So even though HIMSS continues to grow with conferences in Europe and Asia, the Virtual Trade Show, Summit, National HIT Week, and a new delegation to India, it can be as small as the friends and acquaintances you’ve made throughout the industry. And the Annual Conference is also a great place to make new friends. Take the GCC-HIMSS Gala held Tuesday evening of the Annual Meeting – where approximately 200 people gathered to socialize and connect – a certifiable BASH! Edward Hospital’s IT group showed their rock video “I Wanna Be in IT” to the tune of Nickelback’s “I Wanna Be a Rockstar.” It was very well done and shows how IT departments can meet their daily IT challenges and still have a good time. The food and drink flowed freely and I personally saw new connections made throughout the party. If you went to the conference hopefully you found what you were looking for; whether that be education, product information, vendor contacts, or new industry friends. And despite the fact that the conference seems to grow every year, I hope that you make enough personal connections so that whatever city hosts the conference, you still hear those little child voices singing our favorite song “IT’s a small world after all, IT’s a small world after all, IT’s a small world after all, IT’s a small, small world!” (Try to get that out of your head the rest of today!) See you in Chicago next year from April 4-8, 2009! Chicago HIMSS Board Officers 2008 Nominations Once again, it is time to elect new Board Officers. This year there are eight of fifteen Board positions to be filled. They are: President Elect (1 year term + 1 year President + 1 year Past President) Program Chair (2 year term) Sponsorship Chair (2-year term) Student Liaison (1-year term) Four Member-at-Large positions Eligibility. Members who are elected to the Board must be active, dues-paid members of National HIMSS who have completed one (1) year of membership. Nominees for President Elect must have held a position on the Board in at least one of the immediately three (3) prior years. Term of Office. The tenure of elected Officers shall commence July 1st through an election process. President-Elect, President, and Immediate Past President are each one-year terms that are served consecutively. The president term is effectively 3 years with one year in each position. A President-Elect will be elected each year. Member-at-Large positions will be elected for one-year terms. All other officers’ terms shall be two years. All officers, except president, may serve in the same position for two (2) consecutive terms. Please feel free to contact any of our board members with questions or to learn more about a position you are interested in. Contact information for each board member can be found at http://www.gcchimss.net/officers/officers.html Best regards, Frank Scafidi, CPHIMS Secretary, GCC-HIMSS Nursing Informatics HIMSS is working with AMDIS (Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems) on going back to CMS and Capitol Hill to present an argument of focusing on e-prescribing rather than penalize people for not using tamper resistant paper. Monday March 24th, HIMSS Co-hosted a session with a new caucus called the "New Democrat Coalition". This was a coalition of moderate Democrats that has been set up by the Healthcare Task Force. This Task Force has been focusing on Health IT issues. Blair Hedgepeth, HIMSS Sr. Manager of Congressional Affairs briefed this coalition on Monday, March 24th. The primary goal for the coalition in 2008 is to pass e-prescribing legislation. Sponsorship This past year the GCC-HIMSS Chapter has been successful again by engaging a broader sponsorship base. We increased our overall sponsorships to nineteen corporations this year. This includes a record nine Platinum engagements! My personal thanks go out to all corporations who participate. Our corporate sponsorships have enabled GCC-HIMSS to provide exciting, new programs each year that continually attract a broad spectrum of Healthcare professionals. This past year we expanded our education programs, and we tried some new things too. On April 22nd , 2008 we debuted our first Webinar sponsored by Laurus Technologies titled “Achieving Compliance, Security and Efficiency through Data Driven Identity and Access Management”. We also added vendor tables at our quarterly education and networking meetings so our sponsors could meet the GCC-HIMSS members in an intimate, casual setting. Finally, we increased our marketing efforts to generate greater awareness of the GCC-HIMSS programs and events. The sponsorship program offers a variety of options to align the corporate sponsors’ marketing strategies with the appropriate programs and events created by GCC-HIMSS. We continually evaluate and strive to develop our programs based on feedback from past and current engagements. We take great effort to match the products and services provided by our sponsors with the members of our GCC-HIMSS community. Formal Sponsorship for FY09 will begin in May with initial solicitations for engagements closing at the end of August. This will ensure that all sponsors receive all the benefits being offered by our sponsorship program. If you have any questions regarding the GCC-HIMSS Sponsorship program please do not hesitate to contact Corey Gaarde at 312-926-8007 or via email at cgaarde@nmh.org. RHIO Liaison Update Much of the recent HIMSS RHIO activity has involved co-ordination of RHIO and Advocacy liaison efforts. This is a logical direction to take as most of the current healthcare IT legislation on the table is related to Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) and Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs). HIMSS members are encouraged to participate in advocacy activity at both the state and national levels. A recent RHIO Roundtable presentation giving tips on how to get grants and funding for RHIO projects stated that the federal government alone has 26 agencies providing over $400 billion per year in funding for RHIO/health technology related projects, with the average grant being in the range of $250,000 - $500,000. Funding is restricted to broad national priorities such as homeland security, telemedicine, and emergency preparedness, which touches on a wide variety of programs at the local, state and national levels. Federal dollars are often pass-through grants administered at the state level. While acknowledging it is a bit cumbersome to navigate, they suggested that the “go to” place to identify funding opportunities is the Federal Electronic Grants Clearinghouse at www.grants.gov. In addition there are numerous funding programs from states and foundations. For anyone interested in possible involvement with a state-level HIE, two recently published reports developed under a contract from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) with the Foundation of Research and Education (FORE) of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) are recommended. The project was focused on bringing forward relevant field research, guiding ongoing HIE development among states and helping to align multilevel efforts to establish a nationwide health information network (NHIN). These reports are available at not charge at www.staterhio.org Education Committee Thank you to all of our chapter members and speakers for making our two sole GCC HIMSS programs for 2007-2008 a success! In addition to co-sponsoring the Fall Technology Conference, we hosted the October “Hospital Support of Private Physician EHRs: Strategies and Perspectives” and the January “Integrated Information Technology and Health Care Facility Design” programs. Both programs had around one hundred attendees with great speakers and a social networking reception. We heard from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Northwestern Community Hospital, and industry experts who lent their experiences on the relevant and timely topics. For your reference we were able to provide all of the presentations on our website and they are still available for your viewing. Also, there was a webinar on “Achieving Compliance, Security, and Efficiency through Data Driven Identity and Access Management” presented by GCC HIMSS and Laurus Technologies on April 22, 2008. Now it is time to launch into our 2008-2009 season of programs, which through your input are sure to be exciting educational topics for the Chicago chapter. Thanks for your support and we look forward to seeing you at our Annual Business meeting this summer to review our year and share our plans for the next year with you! Lydia 2007-2008 Third Quarter Finacial Report Greater Chicago Chapter Click Here |
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Our Platinum Sponsors  Beacon Partners  Burwood  CDW  Healthia Consulting  Insight  Laurus Technologies  Oracle Healthcare  PatientKeeper  Virtelligence Our Gold Sponsors  American Hospital Association  Elliott Data Systems  GuardEra  Impact Advisors  IBM  Mobile Access  Passport  TeraMedica |