State of the Industry

By Harry Greenspun, MD

With intense focus on healthcare reform, EHR adoption and requirements to achieve meaningful use, the healthcare community is entering a new era of clinical informatics. As the government seeks to expand access, lower costs and improve quality, new paradigms of reimbursement and care delivery are emerging to reward outcomes and coordinate care. Furthermore, federal and state agencies are vastly expanding reporting requirements, further stressing the need for high-quality data and interpretation.

Beyond the government, employers and consumers are increasingly utilizing data to drive healthcare decisions. As benefit costs and co-pays continue to rise, these groups are taking a more active role in assessing the value they receive for their healthcare spending. While the first step in all these efforts is to collect and exchange health data in electronic format, the health system can only evolve if it can effectively manage, interpret, disseminate, and act on the data.

This highlights both the promise and the challenge of clinical informatics. With the influx of new and richer data sources, the prospect now exists to radically transform healthcare delivery, not just to digitize existing processes. Through effective application of informatics, true innovation can take hold. However, this will require informaticists to take a central role, identifying opportunities for improvement, clearly communicating issues, and charting the course forward.

In addition, with a growing list of constituents engaged in evaluating the safety and efficiency of healthcare, informaticists must be able to serve a much broader group of stakeholders. Consequently, while the industry focuses on developing new techniques for managing and utilizing information, new priorities emerge. Most notably is the need to identify, inspire, and develop new leaders. As the depth, breadth, and complexity of informatics grow, so does the need for expanding and enriching leadership.

Informatics leadership will take on many forms to enable the transformations that will create a safe, efficient, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare system. Some will advance traditional practices but with much richer data. Others will identify ways to incorporate novel information sources to create completely new ways of improving care. Still others will be at the forefront of transparency and public reporting efforts that will have profound impacts on care delivery, reimbursement, and public policy.

These needs exist globally as countries worldwide face extraordinary pressures of rising demand for health services amid limited resources. Systems must be reengineered, and all are looking to leverage health data to inform policy and meet the demands of a growing population. Clinical informatics is crucial to this process, so while the pressure on leaders will be immense, so will the opportunities.

Harry Greenspun, MD, is executive vice president and chief medical officer of Dell Inc. in Plano, Texas, and chair of the HIMSS Government Relations Roundtable. This year, he came in at Number 18 of Modern Healthcare’s 50 Most Powerful Physician Executives in Healthcare.

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Meet an Informaticist

Additional stakeholders are now playing in the same arena as the CIO and with overlapping areas of responsibility. Clinical Informatics Insights interviewed five industry thought leaders within the CNIO, CMIO, CCIO and CIO role to learn how their organizations have embraced informatics, how they measure success, what current blockades/issues they are facing, and more.

Jenny Elhadary, PharmD,
Administrator of Pharmacy and Clinical Nutrition Services,
Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago

As an administrator at Children's Memorial Hospital, Jenny Elhadary, PharmD, is responsible for the professional and functional activities of the department assuring high-quality, accurate, efficient, and safe pharmacy and nutrition services. Her leadership accountabilities include assuring and measuring clinical quality outcomes, facilitating organizational change initiatives, aligning department goals and managing department resources and budgets, fostering a challenging and compassionate work environment, and participating in the operational planning process for the new hospital scheduled to open in June 2012.

Please describe the extent to which your organization has embraced informatics. Additionally, how have you increased the adoption of informatics theories/concepts in your organization?
Informatics has been evolving at Children's Memorial Hospital for a number of years. We strategically began this venture several years ago with an early adoption of the electronic medication administration record and bar-coding at the point of care. These projects went live in February 2004. Since then, we have transitioned to a full electronic medical record including computerized provider order entry. Initially, the informatics program primarily involved nursing leaders but as time progressed and workflows became more integrated, the informatics program included leaders from all clinical areas. As the informatics program expanded its membership, I was the first participant representing pharmacy. To assure the success of the bar-coding project, it was imperative that nursing and pharmacy develop a solid, healthy relationship to marry workflows for both departments that would be highly impacted by the change. As the pharmacy champion for the project, I became both the informatics specialist as well as the workflow expert. This role has since continued as we implemented other information technologies. Children's Memorial Hospital has taken a multidisciplinary approach in the decision making process which has proven to be a successful tactic when implementing integrated workflows.

What do you use as a gauge to measure success within your organization?
Measuring successes of any change is difficult when healthcare is in a state of cultural change. Not only is evaluating the final result of the project important, ongoing measurement of success to assess whether the change met the objectives is critical. The challenging piece to measuring success is measuring the right things – did it meet the customer service, workflow efficiencies, quality, safety, and financial objectives? Some ongoing measures of success have included setting annual corporate goals for reducing medication events, measuring usage of verbal and telephone orders, measuring bar-coding compliance, and measuring completeness of the medication reconciliation process.

C. Eric Hartz, MD,
Chief Medical Information Officer,
Eastern Maine Medical Center

C. Eric Hartz, MD, shares his time between the practice of medical oncology at CancerCare of Maine and his position as chief medical information officer at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Dr. Hartz attended undergraduate school at the University of Illinois in Urbana before heading off to medical school at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He completed his internal medicine training and medical oncology fellowship at the Ohio State University Hospitals in Columbus.

Dr. Hartz is very interested in patient safety initiatives including development of decision support tools and standardized order sets. He has presented tutorials on development of patient safety rules/alerts at the American Medical Informatics Association annual meeting and has traveled around the country assisting in standardized order set development. 

Dr. Hartz and Eastern Maine Medical Center continue to lead the process and culture changes with adoption of a complete electronic medical record through the continued development and maintenance of standardized order sets and decision support; computerized provider order entry was successfully implemented in November 2007. Eastern Maine Medical Center was named Most Wired in 2007 and 2008, received the Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence in 2008, and awarded one of the Beacon grants last week.

Please describe the extent to which your organization has embraced informatics. Additionally, how have you increased the adoption of informatics theories/concepts in your organization?
Eastern Maine Medical Center is a member of EMHS. All EMHS member organizations are fully committed to transforming care through clinical information technology, and together we have recently launched eQuest. eQuest is a multi-year, multi-phased program with the purpose of accelerating our course to achieving our vision (to be the best rural healthcare system in America by 2012) by building a foundational electronic health record throughout the system. Through the implementation of best practices, a structured reporting system, and timely decision support, EMHS will further hardwire a culture of quality and safety. 

We have established a team of people at each of our seven hospitals to help to facilitate the clinical transformation and launch CPOE and other supportive information technology for their organization. Each of our hospitals is at a different stage of the transformation, but we are all working together to ensure we meet our goals.

Our goal is 100 percent elimination of preventable errors, which means always following recognized, evidence-based best practices, adhering to standards set by The Joint Commission, and compliance with EMHS policies, all of which are designed to prevent such things as hospital acquired infections, wrong site surgeries, fall and burns, and medication errors, etc. With the program we emphasize that our clinical transformation is not just about using information technology, but it’s about the meaningful use of technology. We want to use our systems in a way that drives positive change. During our process, project teams at each organization will be working diligently to ensure we develop and employ order-sets and protocols based on “best practice” medicine. In doing so, these teams are building the checks and balances to help facilitate meaningful use.

As an executive leader, what current blockades/issues are you facing?

• Budget concerns/constraints—generating the revenue needed to support the growth of programs when we are faced with a declining reimbursement rate
• Prioritizing projects for resources (staff and monetary)
• Ensuring new applications implemented are usable and enhance the care process as opposed to slowing them down. Making sure all data elements that we need to mine for reporting are collected during the care process. 
• Changing expectations
• Educating staff about why the changes are necessary and work that was done on getting their buy in
• Educating general public about technology and its role in their care (why/how computers are at the bedside and how technology can make care safer/higher quality)
• Amount of work to do versus the timeframe allotted to do it

What do you use as a gauge to measure success within your organization?
Preventable error monitoring, blood transfusion utilization, adherence to evidence-based order sets and care pathways, other patient safety and regulatory measure goals, length of stay, readmission rates as well as many financial measures. Our data mining techniques generate over 400 reports daily. Other ways include completion of projects on time and on budget, as well as satisfaction with IT service.

How does it feel to be one of the 15 Beacon Communities?
We are honored to be one of 15 communities nationwide to receive funding through the Beacon Community Project. I think it recognizes the amount of and quality of work we’ve completed to date on our IT infrastructure and this one is especially exciting because it underscores the importance we place on innovation.

The funds from Beacon will be especially helpful in our ability to connect smaller hospitals and other health providers to technology that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. EMHS and its member organizations have already invested heavily in research and healthcare information technology, and we are eager to help advance both in Maine.

It’s also exciting to have such a pivotal role in advancing the adoption of electronic health records and expanding connection to Maine’s statewide health information exchange. Ultimately this will make our healthcare delivery system more cost efficient and improve care for patients, especially those with chronic disease.

Elizabeth O. Johnson, RN-C, MS, CPHIMS, FHIMSS,
Vice President, Applied Clinical Informatics,
Tenet Healthcare Corp.

Elizabeth O. Johnson, RN-C, MS, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, is vice president of applied clinical informatics (ACI) for Tenet Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest integrated healthcare systems, and holds responsibility for providing strategic vision and tactical planning for all clinical systems used across the 47-hospital healthcare organization. With the passage of 2009 federal legislation including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), its key Health Information Technology Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provision, and this year’s landmark Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Ms. Johnson has initiated a sweeping initiative across Tenet designed to meet the national call for healthcare reform called IMPACT: Improving Patient Care through Technology. In addition, since her appointment by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the Health IT Standards Committee, Ms. Johnson’s contributions are helping to define the term “meaningful use” as it drives the integration of interoperable electronic health records across the U.S. healthcare delivery system. Ms. Johnson also currently serves as vice chair of HIMSS Board of Directors.

Please describe the extent to which your organization has embraced informatics. Additionally, how have you increased the adoption of informatics theories/concepts in your organization?
At Tenet, the API team is dedicated to clinical informatics – the science of applying technology to clinical practice – as the best answer to the national call to action for healthcare reform through the meaningful use of health IT. This includes working with data and information to improve patient outcomes by providing tools and applications that can help with decision making at the point of patient care. Tenet’s clinical informaticists are skilled at applying policy, workflow optimization, change management and adoption of clinical systems to provide quality, evidenced-based care in the hands of the professional clinician.

Tenet’s ACI department supports clinical processes and standards related to clinical systems at all Tenet hospital sites; examples include electronic order entry, emergency departments, and obstetric systems. During implementations, ACI works with Tenet hospitals to define and evaluate clinical processes, promote system awareness and adoption, and help identify processes and outcomes affected by the new or upgraded systems. 
At Tenet hospitals, the A-Teams include CEOs, COOs and CNOs, who work closely with ACI staff to assess, plan, implement and evaluate the system to ensure that it will enhance clinicians’ ability to provide outstanding patient care.

ACI offers system implementation support from pre-planning strategies through communication, testing, training and go-live. The ACI team’s goal is to ensure the integration of new clinical applications into clinical operations is as smooth as possible so clinicians can focus on their patients.

As an executive leader, what current blockades/issues are you facing?
While Tenet excels in clinical informatics due to strong commitment by its senior management to achieving the goals of the IMPACT program, one area the ACI team is working hard to improve is field communications – making sure that Tenet’s clinicians know what is coming while also gaining a more complete understanding of their ideas. The health system is blessed with some 50,000 hard-working, dedicated, smart employees who are deeply interested in IMPACT’s success. Therefore, the ACI team is working to use more efficient and expansive methods to reach them, inform them and learn from them. To address the communications challenge, Tenet is well on the way towards putting new programs into place that will result in a more effective exchange of information in the coming year.

What do you use as a gauge to measure success within your organization?
Tenet is using metrics to determine its hospitals’ progress, such as how long it takes from the time a medication is ordered to the moment it is given to a patient or how many times a lab or radiology order might have been duplicated. The ACI team is working to develop baselines against which it can measure to map improvements. This, however, is only the beginning.

Tenet’s long-term goal is to measure the real effectiveness of patient care on the basis of outcomes. To take initial steps, the ACI team will continue working to provide clinicians with better tools and then measure the effect of such actions. The team will then share its findings with clinicians and work on new ways to improve care across the system.

For example, through the use of computerized provider order entry (CPOE), the ACI team will provide physicians with order sets that have evidence-based research attached. When they prepare to write an order, ACI will provide links to sources of information to help them care for patients armed with the latest research at their fingertips. As a result, ACI will make their lives easier while improving the level of care.

Identify one publication or tool/resource that inspired you or assisted you on the job.
My work with HIMSS over the years – presently as vice chair – and my participation as a member of the Health IT Standards Committee in Washington, DC, have been invaluable as we work to address the challenges inherent in healthcare reform. Both roles have helped translate the intent of recent, landmark legislation into ways that Tenet can work to provide the right information when and where it’s needed to improve the care and lives of people in the many communities we serve.

Bill Shickolovich,
Vice President and Chief Information Officer,
Tufts Medical Center

Bill Shickolovich, is vice president and chief information officer at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. The 451-bed academic medical center is the principal teaching hospital for Tufts University School of Medicine and home to Floating Hospital for Children.

Please describe the extent to which your organization has embraced informatics. Additionally, how have you increased the adoption of informatics theories/concepts in your organization?
Like many other organizations around the United States, we are working hard to understand healthcare reform, what it will mean and how it will manifest itself to us in the local market; align the incentive opportunities under ARRA to our current technology strategy and roadmap; continue to enable various technologies to make us more efficient and increase the quality of care that we provide; and understand and support the data requirements of today while working to predict the requirements of the future.

The old saying “what gets measured gets managed” could not be more true in today’s healthcare environment. We are all trying to best understand: what are we doing, how well are we doing it, what measures do we adopt, how do we get the data, who ultimately owns the information, how often is it refreshed, how do we take the information and transition it back into practice, who is responsible for communicating both internally and externally, how frequent are the distributions, etc., etc., etc.? Many of us are at various stages of maturity across the wide variety of business and quality measures. We believe we need to continue to focus on how we can use information as a success measure for our current activities while we elevate the discussion and value of a comprehensive enterprise informatics program.

There are many market forces that are bringing more attention to informatics and how organizations are using data to drive their business. In a highly competitive landscape with challenges such as cost pressures, access to capital and deployment of a variety of different enablers, it can be a daunting task at a very exciting time in our industry. I liken it to swapping out the engine while midflight. We need the current engine to keep the airplane in flight but know that our current engine will not clear the series of mountains that we can clearly see in the distant horizon.
We are addressing our needs from a variety of perspectives:

• We are working hard to deploy various technologies to capture various information while we deliver care to our patients. 
• Our community EHR is a significant enabler for are larger business and network strategy: increasing the quality of care we provide across a distributed network while managing costs.
• Data and information are at the cornerstone of what we are doing. This includes understanding how well our providers are adapting to the new technology, how successful are our providers in meeting our various quality measures, how do the various clinical decision support technologies influence practice patterns and what impact will our patient centered medical home have on these indicators and behaviors?
• We are using various levels of clinical information from our recent deployment of medication administration and CPOE activities to use data to tell us how well we are managing our medication process. It is very exciting to use this information and collaborate with our clinicians on how we can make our collective practice a safer place to practice medicine.
• We are using various indictors to help us understand how efficient we are in moving patients through our institution.
• While we have data on many fronts, we are working on maturing our general informatics strategy to bring all of this information together to support our research, clinical and academic mission.

As an executive leader what current blockades/issues are you facing?
In summary, keeping the plane flying while we address the wide variety of current and emerging needs in an industry that is and needs to change quickly is our biggest challenge. The good news is most in the industry are understanding the call to action that presently exists. The industry has moved from “Do we need information systems?” to “How can we use information to enhance our performance in all dimensions?” We are bringing our leadership team along in developing a comprehensive education and enterprise assessment as to what our informatics needs should look like to enable our various business objectives.

What do you use as a gauge to measure success within your organization?
We have a wide variety of specific qualify, efficiency and financial measures to tell us how we are performing. A key indicator will be how well we balance our current needs while we deploy and enable a wide variety of enablers to support the kind of reform that the industry is calling for. Ultimately, it comes down to how well can we care for the patients in which we serve, how can we use information to transform the necessary parts to improve the overall quality and safety of our delivery system, and how we can do so in a fiscally responsible manner?

Jackie Willis, RN, MS,
Vice President and Chief Clinical Information Officer,
Adventist Health System Information Services

As chief clinical information officer for Adventist Health System Information Services, Jackie Willis, RN, MS, is responsible for all clinical information systems, clinical informatics and health management engineering for its 26 hospitals in 9 states. This includes implementing and supporting all clinical systems, optimizing clinical systems through informatics and best practices, and streamlining and optimizing clinician workflow and clinical systems usage with process improvements and management engineering principles.

Please describe the extent to which your organization has embraced informatics. Additionally, how have you increased the adoption of informatics theories/concepts in your organization?
When I joined the Adventist Health System five years ago, clinical system support was provided exclusively by clinical application specialists. Each hospital had a clinical project manager, who worked with our centralized corporate clinical information systems team to implement new systems locally at the hospital. I converted the local hospital position to a clinical informatics lead, and asked that they report directly to the hospital Chief Nursing Officer (CNO). My team and I meet monthly with the CNOs and together with their clinical informatics leads to share clinical system updates, discuss strategic IT initiatives, and promote discussion and seek input on informatics topics and issues. This has improved CNO understanding and support for clinical informatics.

To build a centralized informatics team, I hired regional clinical informatics managers to support four to five hospitals in each region and mentor the hospital-based clinical informatics leads. We are currently doing so much clinical project and informatics work that we recently added clinical informatics transformation specialists to the centralized corporate information systems team to work on special projects and assist the regional clinical informatics managers. We also added three healthcare management engineers to the centralized clinical team in the past two years to help us with methodology.

As an executive leader what current blockades/issues are you facing?
There is a very strong appetite for IT in our company and we continue to add new clinical systems and projects. It is a challenge to find the time to focus on best practice and optimization of current systems. We have added some staff but have the same economic constraints that other health systems are experiencing. As budgets shrink, hospitals continue to look at the local clinical informatics lead position and add new responsibilities, diluting the ability to focus on informatics work.

Within your facility how do you convey knowledge?
We use many methods. While direct face-to-face communication is very powerful, it’s difficult to accomplish in our multi-hospital, multi-state environment. We tend to have major clinical project teams gather at a single location for project kick-offs, knowledge transfer and team building. Then we meet regularly via web conferencing and recently added video conferencing, which allows the face-to-face advantage. We use an educational tool called Net Learning to develop standardized educational materials to push out to the hospitals and track usage. We also send our corporate clinical team members on-site to work with individual hospital teams on projects and process improvements.

What do you use as a gauge to measure success within your organization?
The addition of the healthcare management engineers has helped us identify metrics and analytics to track and measure progress. They have also helped us apply consistent methods and repeatable processes that garner success.

How have you attempted to change/direct culture within your organization?
We work with both the CNO executive leadership and the front line clinical informatics leads to help them understand the value clinical informatics brings by enabling clinicians to utilize the clinical systems efficiently and optimizing clinician workflow. I also meet with the Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) to help them understand the value of clinical informatics relative to patient safety and reducing risks and related costs. At the highest level in Adventist Health System, our senior leadership has crafted a vision for patient safety and quality, which supports the work we are doing in informatics.

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Strategies for Success

Changing Demands on Today’s Healthcare Technology Leader

By Barbara Anderman

It was not too many years ago that an acceptable role for a healthcare Chief Information Officer (CIO) was to “keep the lights on,” tending primarily to undemanding and unchanging back office functions. The CIO role was an internal facing position that required little need to focus on activities outside of the organization. Recently, however, industry demands on the CIO have undergone a significant change. This is seen clearly by the additional stakeholders who are now playing in the same arena as the CIO and with overlapping areas of responsibility. These positions include, but are not limited, the Chief Clinical Information Officer, Chief Medical Information Officer, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Nursing Officer, Vice Presidents of Patient Safety and Quality, and Vice Presidents of Innovation. These positions are responsible for developing and maintaining what has become the central nervous system of entire healthcare organizations. The expansion of functionality and increased visibility of information technology has created new expectations for today’s clinical leaders.

Today’s most successful leaders must not only react to the changing healthcare landscape, they must take a role in guiding an organization driven by data and integrated into the organizational culture. These clinical leaders have become a collaborative broker, working across functional lines within an organization and externally representing the organization to key constituencies and to the industry at large. They must leverage information technology as a tool to drive process improvements, improve safety and quality, reduce costs, and define revenue expansion opportunities. Necessary skill sets include competencies, such as project management and infrastructure development, market-oriented skills such as goal-setting and aligning the organizational strategies and vision, all requiring superior communication skills. In addition, these leaders are now expected to advance future innovation.

The scope of the issues that these leaders deal with has increased exponentially. For example, numerous software and hardware platforms are required to address issues that include CPOE, medication reconciliation, lab, pharmacy, and EMRs. Each of these platforms not only requires technical knowledge, but also clinical knowledge that is provided by multiple executives and other clinical leaders. In addition, the need for these diverse platforms to communicate with each other has created its own set of extraordinary challenges. With the significant ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) funding that has recently become available through the passage of the economic stimulus package; providers have been highly incentivized to promote the meaningful use of electronic health records and other healthcare technology. This has created a number of initiatives that require not only significant attention from today’s healthcare technology leaders, but also a broader array of cross-functional experience and a greater emphasis on building a culture of innovation.

Filling an executive level vacancy has become one of the most critical decisions a CEO or executive board currently can face. CEOs are not hesitating to replace incumbent executives who fail to address the rising expectations of HIT needs or who no longer fit into the strategic vision of the organization. These dynamics have led to an increased rate of executive level turnover and therefore, even organizations that are thoroughly satisfied with their current IT leadership need to take a well-considered approach to succession planning. Successful organizations will commit to a long term investment toward the development and management of talent.

Organizations who are looking for a new healthcare technology leader are seeking objective and detailed information beyond the in-depth competency-based interviews that they have relied on executive search firms to complete in the past. For example, greater emphasis is being placed on 360° reference and online psychometric testing. These new measures help to quantify the intangible leadership qualities that address what has become one of the most important issues – cultural fit. Those healthcare leaders who understand these new requirements and can position themselves and their teams to excel in this new environment will find an open path to new opportunities and career advancement.

The following links provide additional information on the issues of executive assessment and cultural fit.

Barbara Anderman is a member of the healthcare and technology sectors at global executive search and assessment firm Russell Reynolds Associates. Barbara works with academic, non-profit and for-profit hospitals and health systems and multi-specialty medical groups to identify and assess CIOs, CMIOs and other senior healthcare and healthcare technology executives.

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HIMSS News

HIMSS Virtual Sessions Highlight Usability Methods for Achieving Meaningful Use

During next month’s HIMSS Virtual Conference & Expo, June 9-10, healthcare professionals will learn innovative approaches and strategies to transform healthcare through an 18-session education program that features two educational tracks: Facilitating Health IT Adoption and Utilization, and Principle and Practice of Usability and Human-Computer Interfaces. Highlights from the latter track include:

Usability Methods to Improve EMRs

Jeffery Belden, MD, department of family and community medicine, University of Missouri, and Janey Barnes, human factors specialist, User-View Inc., will share a user-centered design process that can be adapted to any organization’s EMR development process. They will demonstrate usability methods, improved designs, and ways to evaluate the implementation cost/benefits.

EHR Usability: Pain Points Facing Today's EHR User

Pinpoint specific factors that result in poor EHR usability, which impedes the adoption of EHRs and EMRs by physicians and other care providers, during this session led by MaryAnne Sterling, owner/principal consultant, Sterling Health IT Consulting, and Victoria Bradley, RN, DNP, FHIMSS, vice president and chief nursing informatics officer, Eclipsys Corp. The speakers will also review the results and analysis of the HIMSS EHR Usability Task Force Pain Points Survey and Interviews.

HIMSS Virtual Conference is a fully interactive event that incorporates: online learning with opening and closing keynote presentations, general education sessions, Q&A with speakers, and chances to earn CE credits; networking through virtual lounges where attendees exchange expertise via threaded discussion boards and one-on-one chats using instant messenger and e-mail; and a virtual exhibit hall where attendees visit staffed booths, download information on the latest industry solutions and chat directly with company representatives.

Registration is complimentary to qualified registrants: Non-qualified individuals may attend for a nominal fee ($99 HIMSS Members/$119 non-members).

Reflection on National Nurses Week—May 6-12

National Nurses Week is celebrated each year to honor those women and men who have chosen the nursing profession as a career and to highlight the many and diverse ways that nurses contribute to the betterment of patient care. The 2010 theme is Nurses: Caring Today for a Healthier Tomorrow. You may additionally know that nursing is the largest of the healthcare professions and there are more than 3.1 million registered nurses practicing in the United States.

Nurses share their talents in diverse settings and many choose to specialize their practice and expertise in highly defined areas or types of patient care. One of the newest, and rapidly growing of these nursing is Nursing Informatics. As defined by the American Nurses Association’s Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice “a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom in nursing practice. NI supports patients, nurses and other providers in their decision-making in all roles and settings. This support is accomplished through the use of information technology and information structures, which organize data, information and knowledge for processing by computers.”"

May 12 has been designated Nursing Informatics Day by the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the HIMSS Nursing Informatics Community. It is no coincidence that May 12 was chosen for this day as it is the day of Florence Nightingale's birthday. Florence is probably the first noted nurse to gather, analyze and interpret data for meaningful improvements on care environments and how care was delivered to patients.

Please view the NI Awareness Day flyer and share with any nursing groups, members or interested parties that have a desire to understand and learn more about this exciting profession. Also visit the ANA website to find an online media kit that will get you started with an array of great ideas for publicity and recognition of your indispensable nurses.

On May 12, 2010 at 11 am (CT), the HIMSS Nursing Informatics Community will be presenting “Nursing Informatics 101” by Melissa F. Barthold, MSN, RN-BC, CPHIMS, FHIMSS; Patty Guinn, RN, BS, CPHIMS; and Ruth MacCallum, BS, RN-BC. Register for this complimentary event.

Save the Date: June Health IT Events in Washington, DC

Health IT policy stakeholders from across the nation will descend on the nation’s capital during National Health IT Week, June 14-18; the week is highlighted by the Government Health IT Conference & Exhibition and HIMSS 9th Annual Policy Summit.

National Health IT Week
June 14-18
National Health IT Week is a collaborative forum, now in its fifth year, of assembling key healthcare constituents—vendors, provider organizations, payers, pharmaceutical/biotech companies, government agencies, industry/professional associations, research foundations, and consumer protection groups—working together to elevate national attention to the necessity of advancing health IT.  Events throughout the week will send the nation’s policymakers a powerful message on the importance of fostering the widespread use of health IT to improve patient safety and healthcare quality.

Government Health IT Conference & Exhibition
June 15-16
The 2010 Government Health IT Conference & Exhibition, to be held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, will focus on the innovative practices and policies that make up the strategy for building a meaningful and lasting foundation for nationwide health information exchange over the next five years. The event features two educational tracks. Blueprints for Nationwide Health Information Exchange examines strategies and policies across government levels relative to meaningful use, best practices, security and governance required to make lasting improvements in the HIE ecosystem. Connecting the Health Community focuses on innovative ways to drive collaboration among all levels of government.

HIMSS 9th Annual Policy Summit
June 16-17
With the continuing emphasis on the role of IT in healthcare transformation and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, it is more important than ever to become better educated on health IT policy and engage with your elected officials. Policy Summit activities include a keynote speech by a Member of Congress, educational panel discussions, hands-on training for health IT advocacy on Capitol Hill, meetings with legislators and their staff, and networking receptions and awards ceremonies.

 

Keep HIMSS Clinical Informatics Insights coming to you! Subscribe to this complimentary e-newsletter online. Have a question, comment or idea? Please send them to Cari McLean.

Tool Box Picks

HIMSS Senior IT Executive Community
HIMSS Senior IT Executive Community in collaboration with the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is open to upper-level IT executives at healthcare provider organizations, including CIOs, CTOs, CMIOs, CNIOs, Deputy and Associate CIOs, and C-Suite executives who are stakeholders in IT initiatives, at healthcare providers organizations. The SITE community provides a place within HIMSS for peer-to-peer networking, problem and solution sharing, education, and to provide an avenue for getting involved in HIMSS, CHIME, and national initiatives that are important to senior IT executives.

American Organization of Nurse Executives
The American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) is the national organization of nurses who design, facilitate, and manage care. With more than 7,000 members, AONE is the voice of nursing leadership in health care. Since 1967, the organization has provided leadership, professional development, advocacy and research to advance nursing practice and patient care, promote nursing leadership excellence and shape public policy for health care. AONE's 48 affiliated state and metropolitan chapters and its alliances with state hospital associations give the organization's initiatives a regional and local presence. AONE is a subsidiary of the American Hospital Association.

Healthcare Leadership Alliance Competency Directory
The Healthcare Leadership Alliance (HLA) is comprised of the nation’s premier professional societies representing more than 100,000 members across the healthcare management disciplines. HLA has created the HLA Competency Directory, an interactive tool to ensure that future healthcare leaders have the training and expertise they need to continue meeting the challenges of managing the nation’s healthcare organizations. The HLA Competency Directory is a landmark effort to identify competencies that are important across diverse professional roles within healthcare management

Leadership’s Role in Execution: Change Must Happen Organization-wide to be Successful
In this article reprinted from Healthcare Executive’s March/April 2008 issue by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), IHI’s Chief Operating Officer Maureen Bisognano describes leadership's role in execution of quality improvement. Core elements for process improvement and for achieving system-level results from strategic improvement projects are discussed.

21st Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey
The 21st Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey (Healthcare CIO Report) reports the opinions of information technology (IT) professionals from healthcare provider organizations across the United States regarding the use of IT in their organizations. The study was designed to collect information about IT priorities, business issues that impact technology adoption, security concerns, IT staffing & budgeting and other crucial factors in the use of IT to enhance healthcare.

Join the Discussion

The HIMSS Senior IT Executive Subgroup on Linkedin, in collaboration with CHIME, is for upper-level IT executives at provider organizations. Limited to qualified individuals, senior executives who are stakeholders in the IT initiatives at their organizations are welcome to join. The purpose of this subgroup is to provide senior IT executives an exclusive forum within the HIMSS Linkedin Group for peer-to-peer networking, idea exchange, and problem and solution sharing.

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Upcoming Events

Demystifying Meaningful Use and Adoption: A Practical Approach
May 11, 2010

Northern California HIMSS Chapter - 3rd Annual Nursing Informatics Symposium 2010
May 19, 2010
Sacramento, Calif.

HIMSS AsiaPac10 Exposition
May 26-28, 2010
Beijing, China

HIMSS Virtual Conference & Expo
June 9-10, 2010

National Health IT Week
June 14-18, 2010
Washington, DC

2010 HIMSS Government Health IT Conference & Exhibition
June 15-16, 2010
Washington, DC

HIMSS Public Policy Summit
June 16-17, 2010
Washington, DC

2011 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition
Feb. 20-25, 2011
Orlando, Fla.

HIMSS Webinars & Audio Conferences

HIMSS Chapter Events