I’m sure that some of you might have seen me complaining on Twitter about the challenge of trying to sift through the 300+ educational sessions at HIMSS. I even tried to convince the HIMSS expert Neil Versel to offer up some suggestions on which HIMSS 2012 sessions to attend. He suggested just leaving all of the education times open and decide later. It’s a good idea, but I think I prefer meeting with people more than some of the available sessions. Neil enjoys the sessions a bit more than I do.

One of my favorite old Neil Versel posts was when he basically said, “HIMSS is more than just the exhibit hall.” With 300+ sessions at HIMSS 2012 there should be something you will find interesting, so HIMSS should be more than just the exhibit hall.

Today I started ripping through the HIMSS sessions to try and identify those I found interesting and worth putting on my schedule. While they might make it on the schedule, that doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily attend. I debate attending based on the flow of the conference, people I’m with at the time, and if I’d already heard enough on that subject for one HIMSS. Plus, I often put multiple sessions that are at the same time on my schedule. In those cases, I use the above criteria to decide which ones I should attend.

The other X Factor with this all is that I still have to schedule my meetings with vendors I find interesting during HIMSS as well. I’ll start doing that now that I know which HIMSS sessions are happening when. At least now I won’t schedule a meeting with a vendor during the Biz Stone keynote. That would be a travesty.

Below you’ll find my HIMSS 2012 schedule of sessions (which will likely continue to change), but for those interested here’s the process I did to find interesting sessions. First, I added the exhibit hall hours and keynotes. Next, I went through the HIMSS Specialty Programs and HIMSS Social Media Center schedule (My HIMSS Panel on Wed, 2/24 from 4-5 made it on my schedule from this list). Then, the HIMSS Education section has the sessions broken out into “Core Education” areas. I found the Federal Participation at HIMSS 12, Senior Executive sessions and EHR Best Practices sections quite interesting.

There you have it. I’m sure I missed some sessions I should attend, so if you know of some that you think are worthwhile do let me know and I’ll check them out. Now without further ado, my current schedule for HIMSS 2012:

As you can see it’s going to be a full and crazy week for me at HIMSS 2012, but as I said before HIMSS is great for me. Everyone goes there with a little different plan on what they want to accomplish and learn, but hopefully my list of sessions will be helpful to someone else navigating the HIMSS 2012 gauntlet.

Let me know if you have any questions about particular sessions and I’m happy to tell you why they made the list as well.

It seems like everyone I talk to or interact with in the Health IT world is in full on HIMSS 12 preparation mode. I only attended my first HIMSS 2 years ago in Atlanta. So, I’m mostly a newbie at HIMSS. I sometimes long for the days when I just went to HIMSS with little real planning. I just went and enjoyed myself.

As you can imagine, HIMSS is a perfect place for me and my business. I’ve often told people that the core of my business is great content and advertisers. Turns out that every booth and every person at HIMSS is possibly both. For me, it’s like being a kid in a candy store. So, many exciting things to try (and you might even say you get sick after “eating” too many as the flavors all run together). To be quite honest, I love the entire experience. I was meant for the system overload that happens at HIMSS. I love large crowds of people and being overstimulated. I guess that’s why I love living in Las Vegas (which is also convenient for this year’s HIMSS).

HIMSS Attendee and Exhibitor Count
Enough about me. What can we expect at this fantastic affair called HIMSS 2012? Last year there were 30,000 attendees and I wouldn’t be surprised if this year it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 people attending HIMSS. During an #HITsm twitter chat about HIMSS, I said that there would be at least 1000 vendors exhibiting at HIMSS. If I remember right (I can’t find the tweet), one of the HIMSS staff corrected me and said there would be 1100 companies exhibiting at HIMSS this year.

What does all this mean? Well, as my mother always told me: You can’t do everything. I’d always look at her shaking my head saying, “You’re right….but I’m sure going to try.” I think this describes my approach to HIMSS as well. Although, each year I am getting more selective on what I spend my time doing.

Press at HIMSS
I’m sure that many reading this are wondering how they can get some coverage on the Healthcare Scene blog network at HIMSS. Considering the 40 or so emails from PR people that I have filed away already, I’m going to have to apply a pretty strict filter.

What then are my filters?

First, if you’re an EHR company, then I’m probably interested in connecting with you in some form. Although, if you’re an EHR company that’s just seen me and has nothing new to say, then I’ll probably pass at this HIMSS. To be honest, I could probably fill my entire schedule with just EHR companies considering how many EHR companies there are out there. Plus, I think I’m going to bring around my flip video and do an EHR series called “5 Questions with EHR Companies.” I’ll see how many EHR companies I can get to answer the same 5 questions.

However, an entire week of just EHR talk would be a little rough. Plus, I asked on Twitter if I should look at things outside of EHR and they all said I should. I’m a man for the people, so I must listen. How then could another healthcare IT company get me interested in meeting with them at HIMSS?

The best way to get me interested in talking with your company is to provide something that will be interesting, unique and insightful to my readers. Remember that my main goals are great content and advertising. If you provide me with great content that my readers will love, then I’ll love you and likely write about that content.

I didn’t realize this when I started blogging, but I’m not like a lot of journalists. I don’t go to any conference with stories in mind. I’m not digging around HIMSS to try and find an ACO story for example. Instead, every person that I talk to I’m trying to discover what stories are being told at HIMSS that are worth telling. I’m always happy when people help me find interesting stories.

Social Media at HIMSS 12
Speaking of finding stories. One of the most interesting ways I use to find stories and connect with people is through social media and in particular Twitter (see this post I did on EMR and HIPAA about Twitter). I guarantee you that Twitter usage at HIMSS 12 is going to be off the charts. There is going to literally be no way to keep up. I love the idea that Cari McLean had of the HIMSS Social Media Center summarizing the most important tweets during HIMSS. Granted, that’s an almost impossible task to ask anyone to do.

Of course, the HIMSS related hashtags will be another great way to filter through the various HIMSS related tweets that are happening. Here are some of the ones I’m sure I’ll be using:
#HIMSS12 — official hashtag for the event
#HSMC — HIMSS Social Media Center
#HITX0 — HIT X.0: Beyond the Edge specialty program
#LFTF12 — Leading from the Future specialty program
#eCollab12 — eCollaborative Forum
Here’s a bunch more HIMSS related social media hashtags you might want to consider:

HIMSS Social Media Center
If you love social media like I do, then you’re also going to love the HIMSS Social Media Center. They’re doing a number of Meet the Bloggers sessions again and I’ve been invited to participate in the Health IT Edition of Meet the Bloggers at HIMSS. I’m on the panel along with: Brian Ahier (Moderator) Health IT Evangelist, Mid-Columbia Medical Center, Jennifer Dennard, Social Marketing Director at Billian’s HealthDATA/Porter Research/HITR.com, Neil Versel, Freelance Journalist and Blogger, Carissa Caramanis O’Brien, Social Media Community and Content Director, Aetna. Should make for a pretty interesting conversation. Plus, you know I always like to mix it up a bit.

New Media Meetup at HIMSS
More details coming soon. We’ll have to work on Neil Versel’s idea of starting a Twitter storm to get Biz Stone to come to the HIMSS meetup.

Dates of HIMSS
Be sure to check the dates of HIMSS. As Neil Versel noted, it’s a little different days than it’s been in the past. I personally like these dates better than the other ones.

There you have it. I thought I’d do a short post on HIMSS and I guess I had a lot more to say. I’d love to hear if you’re going to HIMSS. If you know of any events, sessions, parties, announcements, technologies etc. that I should know about at HIMSS, let me know.

And the most exciting part of HIMSS…seeing old friends and making new friends. I can’t wait.

One thing that I love about this industry is its willingness to collaborate, and I’m not just talking about collaborative care. I’m talking about healthcare IT’s propensity to brainstorm new ideas as the drop of a hat. Put two HIT folks – be they physician, vendor or blogger – in a room, and 20 minutes later you’re going to have a new idea related to care delivery, product development or possible partnership on your hands. It gets even more prolific when editorially minded marketing folks like me are added to the mix.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how even blogs can foster this sort of collaboration. Last month in “Finding an EMR Job Champion,” I chatted with Rich Wicker, HIMS Director at Shore Memorial Hospital in New Jersey, about how this industry can best align recent graduates of HIT certification programs with training and jobs. Some of you may have noticed several comments left on that post by Sean McPhillips, a man of many hats. He is currently an adjunct instructor at Cincinnati State – a community college in the HITECH College Consortia; project manager at the Kentucky Regional Extension Center; and creator of the HITECHWorkforce.com, a free resource to help students enter the HIT work environment.

In his comments, he advocates for a mentor-protégé program: “Students still need some more help finding jobs. What I think needs to happen is a “Mentor/Protégé” model. That is, pairing students with industry professionals who can mentor them into the industry. I’ve passively done that…to success. I think that will work.” He later followed up with the news that he hopes to work with HIMSS, which is developing a similar program, to get this model off the ground.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with McPhillips a bit more about his idea. I was eager to find out just how he plans to jumpstart it:

It seems as if you’ve been kicking this idea around for a while. How did it come about?
Being with the extension center, I’ve mentored a handful of people along the way, and I think there needs to be a more structured process so that students coming out of these [HITECH College Consortia] programs who want to be mentored have a place to go, they know how to get and stay engaged in the process. I think that there is with HIMSS, but I don’t think it’s really been tightly coupled with the workforce development program.

When I spoke with Helen Figge, Senior Director of Career Services at HIMSS, she was really excited to talk with me, and pointed me to HIMSS’ career development page to look around and see what they have out there. I’m thinking of how we can connect [what they’re already doing] into the workforce development program within the overall HITECH project structure, so that we can connect students who come out of these programs with their local HIMSS chapter, which could then pair them up with a mentor that’s in their region. That’s what’s really missing. That’s what’s really necessary to get people plugged into this profession – especially if they’re coming from outside of this profession.

HIMSS does not already have some sort of relationship with the college consortia?
They kind of do, but I don’t think it’s really tightly coupled. I think HIMSS recognizes this, so they’ve been developing their career development program. They’re near completion of a new, entry-level certification called the CSHIMS certification. That is something where you don’t need to have a whole lot of experience in health information technology, but you need to demonstrate some degree of knowledge in subject matter to obtain that certification. That might be a good way to help these students take the next step into the profession, when they’re looking to get a job. That could be part of the whole mentorship program concept.

Isn’t there a double-edged sword to it financially? Wouldn’t students have to become paying members of HIMSS, and then would they have to pay for certification? If they’re looking for jobs, finances might be tighter than usual.
That’s a great point. The question is, what are the costs associated with certification and becoming a member. There is a student membership discount. There’s a cost to certification, obviously, so these are things that are to be considered. That has not escaped me, so that’s going to be part of my brainstorming session. I’m going to meet up with them in Vegas when I go out to HIMSS.

One of the things I want to be able to do is make this attractive for people, particularly students, and if they have to lay out $500 or $1,000, and they’re already unemployed or they’re financially strapped, it becomes not just a double-edged sword, it becomes a disincentive.

I wonder if the vendors couldn’t get involved and offer scholarships.
It’s funny that you mention scholarships because that might be something the local HIMSS chapters can do. I know the Ohio HIMSS chapter used to do a $1,000 scholarship every year for students. So this might be something that the boards or the individual chapters could subsidize.

If you’re in the HITECH workforce development program, maybe HIMSS would be willing to waive membership for one year. That might be something they may be interested in doing.

This is part of the whole brainstorming session that I’m going to try to have over the next month or so. I’ll vet this through HIMSS over the next couple of weeks and hopefully we’ll come up with a good strategy by the end of February. And then we’ll start piloting it in the March timeframe.

I hope to run into McPhillips in Vegas to see how his chat with the HIMSS career development folks is coming along. It’s nice to know that one industry insider’s idea, and subsequent blog comments, might actually create job opportunity in the industry.

I’ve blogged before about the importance of decreasing the digital divide in this country in order to truly move healthcare interoperability forward. As I mentioned last month, “Only those patients who have access to these digital healthcare technologies will begin to clamor for them at their next doctors’ visits. Only patients’ whose doctors in turn have reached out to them via email, text or social media regarding the switch to electronic medical records, development of health information exchange and the benefits to care these will hopefully bring will be ready and willing to go with the digital flow.”

When news came across my somewhat cluttered desk of Emdeon’s initiative to provide electronic health record (EHR) technology to physicians in New Jersey’s underserved communities, I first thought, “Yes! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Then I put on my journalist/blogger hat and thought, “Will this truly change anything in these particular communities, or is this just good PR?”

A quick bit of background: Emdeon is partnering with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Minority Health, New Jersey Health Information Technology Extension Center (NJ-HITEC), the state’s REC, and the HIMSS Latino Community. Through the initiative, Emdeon will donate Emdeon Clinician licenses to 100 healthcare providers who practice within medically underserved areas and/or healthcare provider shortage areas, as designated by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), according to a recent Emdeon press release. The company will waive the license fee for these physicians for one year.

The same press release also mentions “EHR adoption is lower among providers serving Hispanic patients who are uninsured or rely on Medicaid, and is lower among providers serving uninsured, non-Hispanic black patients than among providers serving privately insured, non-Hispanic white patients.”

The initiative sounds like a great idea, but the one-year stipulation got me thinking (a bad habit, I know). What will these physicians, who presumably can’t really afford this technology now, do after their year is up? I reached out to Miriam Paramore, Senior Vice President – clinical and government services at Emdeon, to learn more about the ins and outs of the program.

How did the initiative come about?
Miriam Paramore: During the fall of 2010, leaders from the Office of Minority Health (OMH) and Health Information Technology issued a public, written request to health IT vendors, asking them to pay special attention to healthcare providers within underserved communities. This initiative is known as The Alliance to Reduce Health IT Disparities. Emdeon is serving as a private partner with the OMH to offer access to health IT products and services to providers within undeserved communities in New Jersey. We were thrilled to volunteer and to work within these communities.

Has Emdeon ever done anything like this before?
We’re happy to do part of this effort with HHS and it is the first time we’ve partnered with them.  We have great empathy for the challenges of the physicians in underserved communities and we want to help.

What sort of challenges do small physician practices in underserved communities typically encounter?
In addition to challenges like poverty and health disparities amongst their patient population, providers in underserved communities and smaller practice offices face expensive costs associated with on-boarding EHRs. Emdeon created the Emdeon Clinician solution as an affordable EHR “lite” solution for these small practice physicians or those working in underserved communities. They now have an affordable, easy-to-use solution that will help them to qualify for federal HITECH stimulus dollars without unnecessary disruption and expense of a full-blown EHR system.

How will you work with these 100 physician practices to ensure they are able to continue using the donated EHR after the year-long license expires?
Once the 12-month period expires, providers will be able to continue using Emdeon Clinician for only $99 per provider, per month. Emdeon usually has a $500 implementation and training fee [that, for this program,] has been discounted to a one-time fee of $200 for the providers participating in this project. This is a considerable discount and the fee would only have to be paid once. We will begin outreach to these providers in advance of the expiration date so they are aware of the opportunity to remain with Emdeon Clinician for the low fee following the initial 12-month period.

How will Emdeon work with NJ-HITEC and the HIMSS Latino Community throughout this year to ensure that these practices receive continued training and support?
Emdeon has taken the lead with managing this initiative between all partners with monthly meetings to monitor progress. We have a dedicated project manager, who has mapped a process with the internal team to assist with implementing these physicians as soon as possible. Our custom phone number (1-855-840-7120) connects interested providers directly with a dedicated clinical sales executive who can assist them throughout the enrollment process.

The NJ-HITEC and HIMSS Latino partners are assisting in the recruitment of providers who practice within medically underserved areas for this program from their vast networks across New Jersey communities. These partners are working cooperatively with Emdeon to create a strategy that focuses upon identifying and recruiting providers within underserved communities who are willing to adopt EHRs, especially those interested in qualifying for federal incentive dollars.

How many practices do you anticipate being eligible, and how many do you expect will apply?
While we aren’t sure how many will apply, the HHS OMH recognized that the counties of Camden, Essex and Passaic have the largest percentage of underserved communities. Through our collaborative efforts with the OMH, HIMSS Latino and NJ HITEC, we hope to reach many of those physicians within those counties to take advantage of the 12-month program.

How will Emdeon and its partners determine if this program is a success?
Together with our partners, we believe success will be donating all 100 licenses to providers in underserved communities. The reporting element of this project will help OMH understand the progress of EHR adoption in the context of how long implementation takes in its entirety.

So it seems that Emdeon and its partners certainly have their ducks in a row when it comes to aiding and abetting these physicians before, during and even after the program is technically over. I’ll be interested to see if this model will, in fact, be successful, and if it can be supported in other underserved areas across the nation.

For more information on participating in the program, check out: http://www.emdeon.com/newjersey/

Earlier this year I had the good fortune (and the support of my employer) to join the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), an organization that offers interest groups for every possible IT niche you can think of. I’ve attended a few of their health society events, and at every one I’m confronted with statistics and anecdotes surrounding the dearth of qualified healthcare IT professionals in the city and surrounding areas. Much attention at these events is also given to the fact that these professionals are needed now more than ever to help smaller physician practices and larger healthcare systems demonstrate Meaningful Use and achieve associated electronic medical record (EMR) adoption goals.

I’ve commented before on the disconnect between the increasing number of healthcare IT educational opportunities being created by the government and vendors’ willingness (or unwillingness, as the case may be) to hire fresh grads. EJ Fechenda of HIMSS JobMine posed a question related to this conundrum better than I ever could have: “With federal deadlines looming, healthcare organizations need to get moving and there are a lot of job seekers out there ready for the challenge. Are there organizations or companies willing to extend opportunities to these candidates? Is there a training or job-shadowing program that can be used as a best practice for other organizations to implement? Who are the champions already doing this or willing to lead the charge?”

I may have found a champion in Rich Wicker, HIMS Director at Shore Memorial Hospital in New Jersey. Wicker is also an adjunct professor at two HITECH-affiliated community colleges, teaching students who already have strong backgrounds in healthcare or IT the basics of process, analysis, redesign, installation and ongoing maintenance to prepare them for second careers in physician office EMR implementations.

He certainly seems to have a passion for the subject. “I’m devoted to the EMR,” he told me during a recent phone interview. “That’s why I started teaching, really, because I want to see that [adoption] happen so badly.”

He tells me his students are guardedly optimistic about their future job opportunities, which he believes will surge this summer alongside an expected increase in physician adoption of EMRs – six months before the deadline to qualify for Meaningful Use incentives.

As we discussed the state of the HIT job market, we both wondered if what type of organization might have a greater role to play in ensuring that graduate from programs like Wicker’s find jobs.

“We had to really battle our way to get one [software] copy from one EMR vendor,” he explains. “I wish they were more amenable to providing educational software/packages like Apple does throughout all their PCs. I know a few different schools have joined with a vendor. One place I know of is showing Vista, another is showing eClinicalWorks, and another partnered with a local hospital that happens to use Sage.

“I have a relatively limited view, but from what I can see, the vendors are not really engaged with the HITECH student development program. I think they’d probably rather do it themselves.”

“Here’s an idea that I came up with,” he adds. “I’ll throw out the RECs (Regional Extension Centers). That’s another entity that’s funded – it’s kind of their job to get the docs to convert. If they could partner with the colleges and the graduates to possibly divert some of their funding to supplementing the graduates’ income while they worked at a physician practice … So the physician, let’s say, for $5 an hour, they could hire a qualified, certified person. These people are pretty good, too. They know what it is to work. They’ve probably worked 10 or 20 years already, either in IT or in healthcare. So they’re mature employees and highly motivated. They would be great to go in and do a 6-month installation. I think it would be great for the physician if, for $5 an hour, you get somebody that would probably cost you $30 an hour somewhere else.

“Let’s say the student can get another $10 an hour supplemented from the REC or somehow through the government. So they get $15 an hour to go in there … they get four or five months of experience doing an installation and then the physician can make a decision … maybe they ultimately hire the person. That’s just a crazy idea that I had that seemed like the pieces are out there that kind of potentially could work. I sent it into the ONC a couple of days ago.”

Could the RECs have a bigger role to play in ensuring that HITECH graduates gain on-the-job experience and employment? I’d love to hear from any readers out there who may work for or with RECs . Is Wicker’s idea doable? Have we found our champion?

This is my first time attending the mHealth Summit. In past years, I’ve seen the flood of tweets that have come out of past mHealth Summit events and so I knew this year I had to be here. This year’s event doesn’t have a keynote like they had last year in Bill Gates, but it’s been a good event. If I remember right, I’ve heard they have 300 exhibitors and 2600 attendees. I heard in the halls someone saying that they thought the attendance at the event was a little disappointing, but of course that was just from someone in the hall. It’s still a growing event and I think one of the best signs for the event is HIMSS (and now mHIMSS) involvement in the event as well. Wait until the HIMSS machine gets rolling and I think the event will be even better.

One conversation I’ve heard a number of times at mHealth Summit is whether the companies we’re seeing here are real or whether they won’t be around for long. Basically, are these shells of ideas that don’t really have great sustainable business models.

I’m a little torn by the discussion. Mostly because there’s little doubt that many of the companies that are here are going to fail. Particularly because there are at least 40 companies in the nicely done mHealth Startup pavillion. Depending on the numbers you prefer, something like 9 out of 10 startups fail. This isn’t conjecture, it’s basically fact. So, many of these companies will fail, but quite frankly that’s a pretty healthy part of the environment. We want creative individuals that are doing things that may or may not work out. There are thousands of HUGE companies around today that first started out as outrageous ideas.

I heard one person comment that mHealth Summit has a lot more people working together and seeing how they can build their ideas. They contrasted this with the also popular Health 2.0 event in San Francisco where they said many people were too interested in comparing how much money each company had raised. That seems like a pretty apt description of the difference between Washington DC and Silicon Valley to me so it shouldn’t be all that surprising.

All in all, those who say that mHealth is dead or won’t be around for long are off base in my book. The move to mobile is going to happen and mobile technology will play a huge role in healthcare going forward. I could certainly agree with some people that mobile health might one day just become ubiquitous with Healthcare IT. In fact, we see signs of that already, but that doesn’t change the fact that mobile will be huge in healthcare.

One division I do see happening in the mobile health space is the division into two areas: mobile health for industry professionals (ie. doctors, nurses, etc) and mobile health for consumers. At least in the US, I think we’ll see more distinction between those two areas over time.

The holiday season is officially upon us, or so said both of my daughters after they saw Santa Claus conclude the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone – not unnoticed by the average American consumer if recently released retail figures are any indication. The economy seems on the verge of a slight upswing, if our holiday spending this early in the season is any indication.

How does healthcare fit into all this? Two holiday headlines recently caught my eye. The first, “Apple Breaks Black Friday Record,” notes that iPad sales “surged 68%” that particular day, breaking the company’s own purported predictions that it would achieve Black Friday sales four times higher than normal. The second, “Mobile Healthcare and Medical App Downloads to Reach 44 Million Next Year, Rising to 142 Million in 2016,” makes the prediction that “[a]cceptance of new healthcare practices like remote patient monitoring will come directly from consumers becoming engaged in mHealth through the smartphone.”

Forty-four million medical app downloads next year might not be such a high number to reach when you take Apple’s record one-day iPad sales into consideration. Physicians and healthcare consumers alike seem to not only be jumping onto the tablet bandwagon, but gearing up to race it to the finish line as well.

So now that we’ve established the healthcare connection, what’s all this got to do with EMRs? Will these predictions and likely outcomes coincide with an upswing in mobile EMR app development? As of yesterday, 60 apps popped up when I searched for “EMR” apps for the iPad in the iTunes store. Forty-seven results came up for “EHR,” many of them the same. I’ll be interested to see what this number is six months and then a year from now.

As this blog has well documented for some time now, healthcare’s love affair with the iPad was a slow burn at first, but has now become fast and furious. I can only imagine that EMR developers will take their relationships with the iPad to the next level in record time just to meet customer demand. While I won’t necessarily be waiting with baited breath for Practice Fusion’s launch next year of its iPad app, I will definitely check it out while at HIMSS, where I assume they’ll give it a Vegas-style launch.

I’d love to hear from physicians as to how inundated the market is likely to become with these types of technologies. And aside from EMR/EHR apps, will mobile health downloads really take off as predicted? Share your own predictions in the comments below.

Full Disclosure: Practice Fusion is an advertiser on this site, but they didn’t pay Jennifer to mention their iPad app. In fact, I’m not even sure if Jennifer knows they’re an advertiser.

In celebration of National Health Information Technology Week –  proclaimed by President Obama earlier this week in an effort to “urge all Americans to learn more about the benefits of Health IT by visiting HealthIT.gov, take action to increase adoption and meaningful use of Health IT, and utilize the information Health IT provides to improve the quality, safety, and cost effectiveness of health care in the United States – I’m hitting the road and heading to North Carolina.

Actually, it’s pure coincidence that my annual Fall road trip to Charlotte and Chapel Hill coincides with this newly official week of celebratory activities. (You can view a list of events here.) But it did prompt me to ponder the state of North Carolina’s EMR and overall healthcare IT utilization. My first stop was the HIMSS State HIT Dashboard, a handy resource that provides an overview of all 50 states’ utilization of healthcare IT.

According to HIMSS, as of September, 2011, North Carolina has six Health Information Exchanges (HIEs):

•  NC Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance Inc. (NCHICA)
•  Carolina HIE
•  Coastal Connect
•  Western NC Health Network (WNCHN Data Link)
•  Southern Piedmont Partnership for Public Health (SoPHIE)
•  Sandhills Community Care Network

The state’s regional extension center, which assists the state’s physicians with selecting and implementing EMRs, has at this point recruited 50% of the providers in its target group of 3,500 priority primary care providers, according to the NCHICA website. The NCHICA seems to be the main governing/advisory body over the state’s HIT activities. Its 239 member organizations will converge in just over a week at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville for its annual conference and exhibit. The lineup of sessions looks pretty interesting, especially “So You’ve Decided to Implement an EHR, Now What?” I’m sure conference attendees will have a great time at the Brews Cruise as well.

My next stop was Google, where a quick search yielded the fact that North Carolina, and the Duke Center for Health Informatics in particular, is home to MindLinc, an EMR for behavioral health. It is now the world’s largest codified behavioral health database, and provides information for research and benchmarking purposes.

My last stop was YouTube, where I found an interesting video created by Janet Apter, an RN and member of the faculty at the Duke School of Nursing, for Duke’s Doctor of Nursing Practice Program. Entitled “Electronic Health Record – a Promising Solution,” the video shares the perspective of one nurse/patient’s frustration with a lack of interoperability between facilities in the same health system, and makes a simple case for the need for a nationwide EHR system.

Earlier this Summer, I came across news that Greenway Medical Technologies – a developer of electronic health records (EHRs) and practice management and interoperability healthcare IT solutions located just outside of Atlanta – had taken to endorsing pro golfer Jason Dufner. It came as no surprise to me that a healthcare IT company was seeking to increase its profile among the general public. There has been a noticeable shift in increasing the public’s awareness of the impact of healthcare IT solutions on the patient care they will one day inevitably receive. It’s been a smart move on the part of providers and vendors alike to acquaint people with the technology that our government has spent so much time and energy on promoting. I was surprised, however, that Greenway Medical had chosen the celebrity endorsement route. (Golf wasn’t surprising, though. Greenway Medical’s CEO goes by the name of Tee Green.) How much increased visibility, not to mention interest, could a spokesperson bring while swinging a club on the fairway?

His first sponsorship outing at the British Open garnered little fanfare, as Dufner didn’t advance very far. Greenway Medical’s luck changed, however, as Dufner’s skill – and Tiger Woods’ ultimate absence – led him to place second at the PGA Championship last week. Held in Atlanta, the event offered a good excuse for my some of my colleagues at Billian’s HealthDATA, Porter Research and HITR.com to take a field trip to the Atlanta Athletic Club, where I suspect much of the local healthcare industry put in appearances over the tournament’s several days.

I’d have to agree with the Steve Campbell at EMRDailyNews.com, who offered congratulations to Dufner in a recent post “for a wonderful performance at the PGA and to whoever at Greenway made the decision to sponsor Mr. Dufner. The return on investment for that sponsorship just turned very positive.”

I’d also have to agree with one of the post’s commentators that “[r]egardless of his finish, Dufner and Greenway’s [credibility] rocketed this weekend with all of the primetime PGA coverage. Hours of it. And both Dufner and Greenway are classy and humble, in victory and defeat. Bottom line: EHR industry was another winner this weekend simply based on these associations.”

Perhaps Greg Fulton, Public and Media Relations Manager at Greenway Medical, puts it best: “Our main motivation was we felt it was time to continue to bring recognition to the entire health IT industry, now that initiatives like meaningful use are proving to be successful, and we have industry partners who have had good experiences being involved with the PGA TOUR.

“With Jason, we felt like we were partnering with a person first, a golfer second. He really does believe in the goals of innovative and sustainable care coordination that EHRs and healthcare IT can bring. He set up a foundation in his home state of Alabama following the tornado damage there to help people needing ongoing health services, for example.”

When I asked if Greenway Medical would consider entering into other celebrity endorsement deals sometime in the near future, Fulton explained the company’s celebrity strategy a bit further: “At HIMSS10 [in Atlanta], we did have Atlanta radio station deejay Melissa Carter, then of Q100, speak at a Greenway reception to her definite need for EHR data exchange and automated referrals, because she is a kidney transplant patient who needs that constant care coordination. And that’s what would make sense for what type, you ask, of celebrity or sports partnerships to undertake – ones that have a foundation in or can bring industry recognition and tell the story of the advancement of healthcare.”

Is it any wonder that Greenway Medical just announced its customers have secured more than $1 million in Meaningful Use incentives? How many more providers – many of whom are, it’s safe to say, avid golfers – are now aware of the company and will soon look into its products?

I’ll be interested to see what sort of healthcare IT celebrity endorsement pops up next, and where. NASCAR seems a likely candidate. I wonder if Danica Patrick has a coordinated care story to tell?

John’s Note: I got the following message from an EMR vendor a while back. I’ve removed the specific names of the EMR vendors to protect the innocent (and guilty in some cases). Plus, the names of the specific companies are tangential to the issue of ratings services like KLAS.

I’m sure this post will drive some interesting discussion in the comments.

I have been talking with [someone] at KLAS since HIMSS about WHY the KLAS data is either 1) Losing Relevance, or 2) Actually Misleading Providers.

[KLAS representative] told me in April that the average annual “accesses” to the KLAS data was about 17,000, while in 2010, they had over 14,000 through mid-April. Big trend change. ONC-driven, no doubt.

I had a discussion with [KLAS representative] at HIMSS and since, outlining how the KLAS data can and probably IS misleading clients. How? For instance….[EMR Vendor A] gets high marks…almost as high as [EMR Vendor B]
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They have two “konfidence” checks on their data for the 6-25 provider practice size category (KLAS has 1-5, 6-25, and 25+, I believe as their categories, and vendors must submit their reference accounts in those partitions).

If you are a provider who sees high marks for [EMR Vendor A] in the 6-25 provider space…with all the good supporting comments…..well above the other vendors….you would probably rely on that data to decide they have to be on your short list. But everyone knows that [EMR Vendor A] serves mostly primary care and ob/gyn practices. They have adapted templates and have references for those accounts. What if you are an orthopedist or ophthalmologist…or other specialist. They have almost NO references for that. The KLAS data does not break it out. You may be badly mislead….and find out shortly after spending tens of thousands of dollars…that it wont work at all for you.

We have asked them to break out the data by specialty… they know who they are talking to. They know what each practice is. Not hard to add the question…so the data can be sliced that way. Tremendous value-add for ALL practices to know how the vendors break out. Guess what they are going to find out when they do that? And by the way…they ONLY gather data from accounts that have been installed and live for a certain period of time….no data on failed attempts or those that gave up using products.

KLAS agreed in principle it was a good idea to add specialty to their data. They even agreed to start doing it with the last reporting cycle, but didn’t have much time. All the data they have….not normalized by specialty.

LIKE THE GOVERNMENT, THEY ARE ASSUMING ALL SPECIALTIES CAN BE TREATED THE SAME AS FAR AS EMR ADOPTION GOES. Why do they think there is a 50-83% failure rate in the industry? Why has “meaningful use” not been defined for specialties before “certification” of a product can be decided? Does an orthopedist who does hip replacements, rotator cuff surgery and meniscus revisions…..report the same thing as doctors who treat diabetes, liver disease or other costly chronic-care conditions? Heck No.

I don’t think the market fully realizes how “homogenized” the KLAS data is….after all, if the average depth of the Mississippi River is only three feet…..why are there so many different size boats—-barges to sailboats—sailing in it each day?