News Feature | November 10, 2014

CIOs Address Data, System Integration, And More At CHIME Fall Forum

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

CIOs Address Data, System Integration, And More At CHIME Fall Forum

Healthcare CIOs gathered at The College Of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ (CHIME) 2014 Fall CIO Forum (October 28-31) to discuss pressing topics in the healthcare information landscape.

While many organizations had planned on being well prepared for Meaningful Use Stage 2 by the start of this conference, reality proved different. In 2014, CIOs found themselves preparing for issues like initiatives centered around EHR and coding-related programs, an industry shift from volume to value, and quality reporting requirements.

In response, and to best serve the needs of healthcare CIOs, CHIME even offered four tracks of sessions based on the following topics,

  • Strategy And Leadership
  • Organizational Performance Improvement
  • Business And Care Transformation
  • Emerging Issues In Healthcare And Health IT

The sessions, geared toward helping CIOs prepare for 2015(as featured in EHR Intelligence, are outlined here:

  • Surviving The Madness: How CIOs Can Thrive In This Decade Of Uncertainty: Presented by Mary Anne Leach, CHCIO, Sr. VP & CIO of Children’s Hospital Colorado and Linda Hodges, Managing Partner of the Information Technology Practice at WittKieffer — This session was designed to help CIOs prepare for organizational uncertainty, including ICD-10 preparation, and healthcare mergers and acquisitions. It included topics meant to help decision-makers hone leadership and organizational skills necessary for successfully navigating a rapidly shifting healthcare environment.
  • Supporting A Continuous Process Improvement Model With A Cost-Effective Data Warehouse: Presented by Dave Hynson, Vice President and CIO of Greater Baltimore Medical Center and Juan Negrin, Manager of Business Intelligence and Data Governance at Greater Baltimore Medical Center — This discussion explained the use of a clinical data warehouse in supporting patient-centered care initiatives like accountable care organizations (ACOs) and quality improvement projects.
  • IT Realities Of Health System Integration: Presented by CIOs from the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale-New Haven Health System, Atlantic Health, The John Hopkins University and Health System, and CHE Trinity Health. This presentation provided insight into responding to “transformations resulting from health reform, population health management, and a competitive healthcare marketplace.” It specifically focused on the need for a strong IT infrastructure that could handle integrating new tech, data, and connectivity solutions.
  • Data Retention in the Cloud: A Roadmap to Stay Compliant, Eliminate “Legacy System Junkyards” and Retain Access to Legacy Data: Presented by Christine Foley, Vice President of Client Services of MediQuant, and Christy Kindler, CHCIO, RN, Vice President and CIO of Adventist Health System. This session focused on the applied realities of data quality maintenance in an aging health IT environment composed of legacy applications. The specific goal of this session was to provide insight into how to ensure that “legacy system junkyards” don’t compromise data retention compliance, patient care, revenue cycle, and other organization initiatives.

To read more on some of the more specifics CHIME has to offer CIOs and health IT personnel, read this case study on hospital EHR deployment.