Greater Chicago - GCC HIMSS Quarterly Report -

Dear GCC HIMSS Member & Colleague,

It is time once again to share with you a quarterly report from your local HIMSS chapter.

Programs
On January 19th, 2006 we held our second program for this year titled The Hospital of the Future at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. If you were in attendance I think you'll agree it was an interesting program (the program evaluation score was 3.75 out of 4.00) and one of the best attended with 123 seats filled. Our Fall program on RHIO's also had a great turnout with 95 in attendance and a program evaluation score of 3.59. Although attendance has been good, with over 800 members in our chapter and a goal of broadening our collective knowledge, we continue to strive to bring you programs that will entice more of you to attend. Having said that, we welcome your feedback. Please tell us what topics you'd like to see covered or what factors discourage you from attending (location, parking, day of week, time of day, cost, too busy, etc.).

Our next program is being organized by the chapters Nursing Informatics sub-group lead by Ruth MacCallum, RN. It is an all day program titled "Nursing Informatics: Fostering Excellence in Care" and will be held at the Holiday Inn in Gurnee, IL on April 27, 2006. Please stay tuned for more information on this program.

Sponsorship
We are fortunate to have a number of fine companies honor us with their sponsorship this year. They are:

Platinum Sponsors:

Gold Sponsor:

Silver Sponsors:

This is encouraging because it tells us that these fine companies find our chapter to have enough active participation that they see value in supporting us financially. Therefore I want to thank not only our sponsors but all of you for your participation that makes it worth their while to support us. Their generosity helps us to keep our program registration fees low and program quality high.

Financial Status
Our Treasurer reports that we are financially sound with our income equaling our expenses for programs, scholarships and operations. This is another of our goals — using our income to best serve the membership. With the majority of our spending going into our programs we trust we are meeting this goal. This is another reason we encourage you to attend these programs — so you get more value from your membership.

Scholarship
I am very pleased to announce the award of our first $2,000 scholarship to Jeyne Ladaga who is enrolled in the Graduate School of Nursing at Loyola University of Chicago and majoring in Health Systems Management. Congratulations Jayne and best of luck in your healthcare career.

Closing Thoughts
Once again thank you for your participation and support. The level of interest and professional synergy at our programs and the quality of our speakers has been and is a beautiful thing!

Your Chapter Board is doing a fine job this year and I want to thank them all for making our Chapter a success. In harmony,

Frank Scafidi
President, GCCHIMSS