Summer 2017 Newsletter
Message from the President
Hello Northern California HIMSS Membership!
Thank you for tuning in to another edition of our quarterly newsletter! As I mentioned in our last edition, our board had been hard at work on several events, which I am happy to report, went off without a hitch. Our 5th annual ePatient Summit brought close to 300 attendees to the Technology Museum of San Jose where we had the pleasure of partnering with El Camino Hospital to bring a unique experience to attendees through a dynamic speaker lineup combined with hands on workshops addressing the positioning of patients both as “consumers” and as “partners.” The goal of our committee chairs, Santosh Mohan and Samir Batra, was to discuss disruptive ideas and the impact of IT, while providing actionable takeaways on building both a 21st century consumer strategy and an exceptional patient experience. They were able to accomplish all of that and then some, as the feedback has been phenomenal.
An Open Invitation From Your Incoming Board
By Jim Bloedau, incoming 2017-2018 NorCal HIMSS Chapter President
It is an immense pleasure and honor to be your President of the Northern California Chapter of HIMSS for the coming 2017-2018 fiscal year and to lead the execution of our Chapter’s primary mission - to promote the professional growth of the membership. Our approach to this challenge stands on three legs: offering outstanding educational content, hosting networking events, and collaboratively advocating HIT related legislation at the state and national level.
Welcoming the 2017-2018 Executive Committee Chapter Officers
By Stevie Ryan, Past President 2017-2018 and Jim Bloedau, President 2017-2018
Tasked with providing the executive leadership of the Chapter’s Board of Directors, our Executive Committee (EC) is comprised of five officers – President, President-Elect, Past-President, Treasurer, and Secretary.
As your next Past-President and incoming President, Stevie and I warmly welcome our new Executive Committee officers. These are highly talented and extremely exceptional people who are no stranger to the Board with up to five years of board experience preceding their election as an officer.
HIMSS Members Advocate for Telehealth and Interoperability Legislation
By Shanti Wilson, NorCal HIMSS Advocacy Chair, Dr. Larry Ozeran, NorCal HIMSS Advocacy Co-Chair, John Conklin, SoCal HIMSS Advocacy Chair, Ian Slade, Western HIMSS Advocacy Chair
With leaders from the National HIMSS office, over 70 members from the Northern and Southern California HIMSS Chapters participated in the annual California HIMSS State HIT Day on May 3, 2017. Our members and colleagues gathered in the State Capitol to advocate for issues that impact California residents.
For the first half of the day, attendees heard from local and national leaders about the importance of having dialog with our elected officials and the key issues on the national stage.
WHIT Inaugural “Path to Success” with NorCal HIMSS
By Sherri Douville, CEO for Medigram, Inc, @SherriDouville
The WHIT/Women in Health IT Committee, @WomenInHealthIT
WHIT (Women in Healthcare IT) was founded in 2015 with an objective to seed, incubate, and advance women’s career aspirations in Healthcare IT. Affiliated with both NorCal and SoCal HIMSS Chapters, WHIT is led by women in executive and senior leadership IT roles who are passionate about bringing more female talent to Healthcare IT.
With HIMSS, WHIT held its inaugural event, “Path to Success,” on May 19 at the Presidio in San Francisco. “Path to Success” aspired to provide career advice and mentoring to women and girls interested in furthering their careers in IT and STEM. Chaired by Sunny Cooper, CIO of San Francisco Health Plan, and Melissa Scrymgeour, CIO of Gold Coast Health Plan, the event was headlined by Healthcare IT’s top women including political advisors, journalists, C‐level executives, and technologists. Jason Johnson, Board Member for NorCal HIMSS, provided substantial additional leadership and support planning. A huge thanks goes to Sunny's staff for all their hard work on the event, in particular to Corinne Young and Van Wong.
CPHIMS Review Course
By Cathy Coleman, DNP, CNL, CPHQ, Education Committee, CPHIMS Course Coordinator
On June 9, the NorCal HIMSS chapter held a CPHIMS Review Course hosted at the University of San Francisco Pleasanton campus. Twenty eight interprofessional attendees representing over 23 healthcare clinical settings, information technology companies, public health departments and integrated delivery systems learned the latest content from a seasoned The course was lead by HIMSS trainer Deborah Kohn, MPH, RHIA, FACHE, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, CIP, Principal, Dak Systems Consulting.
Upcoming Events with our Sacramento Meetup Group
By Evelyn Milani, NorCal HIMSS Sacramento Meetup Leader
The NorCal HIMSS Sacramento Meetup Group continues to thrive by providing timely updates and information on key topics for our Health IT community.
Our Meetup on June 23 is focused on MACRA, its impact on health systems and private practices, and how IT plays a part in tracking quality measurements. Our panelists, a veritable “who’s who” in the field, will respond to questions on how to navigate Change Management, lessons learned from prior implementations, and how to maximize success upon implementation. Join us here!
Forget Fancy Tools: Back to the Basics of InfoSec Impact of WannaCry on Hospitals & Healthcare
By Jason Johnson, Board Member, NorCal HIMSS
Raise your hand if the last couple of weeks have made you WannaCry. For the record, my hand is up. Since the outbreak of the WannaCry ransomware worm on May 12, security professionals and system administrators have been scrambling to patch systems, gather data, and assess the real impact.
While the latest cyber incident did not have a huge impact in the US, save for some Bayer medical gear running XP, it did wake people up all over the world to the reach that a cyber attack can have. But wait, everyone said there was a patch released two months ago, so currently patched and updated systems are not vulnerable. What a relief, right? Wrong. Since most large organizations, especially in healthcare, are 90-120 days behind on patching, countering this outbreak was squarely on the shoulders of system administrators. Healthcare is especially vulnerable since some systems are vendor managed and/or FDA-regulated.
Questions for Hospital Executives to Ask to Avoid Bad Mobile Technology Advice
By Sherri Douville, CEO for Medigram, Inc, @SherriDouville
I was inspired to write this for all of the amusing and bad technology advice for which health system customers are perplexed. To one vendor, one health system executive said, "I need you to send your suits and khakis home and return with technical people to tell my team exactly why this is not working in our environment." The purpose of this article is to assist healthcare executives to filter which solutions to consider beyond following the crowd.
Why Bad Technical Advice Gets Out: If you have worked with engineers closely, you know that programming languages and other tools and skills are almost like religions. Therefore, whatever they are good at is what they want to promote, really this is human nature. At least in a startup, a big part of the CEO's job is to impose a technology BS filter. One thing we cannot accept is the choice of a tool without a complete explanation for the purpose and rationale as applied to the targeted outcome. This is pertinent in healthcare, where we should be wanting to help clinicians and serve patients or go into a different vertical. To do this effectively, we need to examine the technology being advised and to filter that advice.
HIMSS Announcements
By Jim Bloedau
Education Assistance Fund – Apply this Fiscal Year
HIMSS can provide financial assistance to chapters for speaker and/or educational programming costs related to a specific chapter event. There is a maximum request of $1,000 per chapter and funds are given based on availability and need. Chapters can receive one assistance payment per fiscal year.
To request assistance, download and submit the following form to Chapter Staff.
HIMSS Health IT Value Suite
The HIMSS Health IT Value Suite & Value Score provides the resources to help enterprises organize value strategies and analyze its impact. Begin to build and measure the organization’s value strategy today.