Seminar Description:

What if you called an expensive restaurant for a reservation and the maitre-de said come between six and nine and we’ll sit you when we can. Would you bother showing up? Or, how do you feel when you get bumped from a scheduled flight because the previous flight was cancelled, or they simply over booked?
 
These are awful situations you always want to avoid, but did you know that in over 99% of the hospitals today that is exactly how they handle services that are requested for inpatients. Conversely, if you are an outpatient or ambulatory patient, the likelihood of getting seen at a specific appointed time is pretty good, while a patient in a bed at that same hospital is considered ‘back-fill’. That is, since by their definition inpatients are already in their facility and will most likely be there through tomorrow, your doctor’s request for service, say a chest Xray, is considered time adjustable. Traditionally hospitals ‘schedule’ ancillary and other services for inpatients using a fixed block of time usually in the afternoons, then process inpatient requests for service on a ‘catch as catch can’ basis.

Treating inpatients as 'back-fill' wrecks havoc on patient satisfaction and operational performance. Recently in one large facility an analysis was done on the number of times a care giver or support person came to a patient's room to complete a task, then when they entered the room found the patient was not there, but waiting for service at another ancillary department. In this facility over the course of one year this happened 6,000 times! And every time this happened time was wasted, care was rushed or incomplete, and in many cases the patient's stay and to be extended one or two days more. In some cases these delays caused Emergency Room backups because beds for admissions were not available.

This web seminar will expose what causes these problems and what challenges a hospital faces in addressing them. The presentation will describe how to eliminate them through better care coordination, reduced organizational issues, expanded enterprise resource scheduling and better patient flow. It will also present several off-the-shelf tools that can be used to help solve these problems.

With the federal government looking to cut hospital payments by over $200 billion as part of the new health care legislation, streamlining inpatient operations to cut costs, reduce backlogs, and increase revenue through capacity increases is critical to your financial survival. 

Seminar Presenter:

Frank L. Poggio has over thirty-five years of experience in health care systems.  He has served as a hospital administrator/CFO, software entrepreneur, and industry consultant.  He has completed consulting engagements for both large and small hospitals and clinics, and major vendors of health information systems.  He is President of The Kelzon Group, which focuses on health systems issues.  Previously, he was General Manager of Mediware, Inc., a clinical software company.  He served as President of Citation Computer Systems, Inc., a St. Louis based clinical software company acquired by Cerner ,Inc.  In 1980, Mr. Poggio founded Health Micro Data Systems (HMDS), a firm specializing in client server based systems for health care organizations.  HMDS’ clinical and financial software was installed in over 120 hospitals and other health facilities around the country. 

Seminar Description:

Health institutions have applied various forms of process re-engineering since the 1970’s with limited and varying success rates. Meanwhile commercial industries such as banking, food and retail, have applied process improvement techniques decades longer and have realized far greater ROI than most hospitals could imagine. Over the last decade many health organizations have aggressively applied advanced process improvement techniques such as Six Sigma and LEAN, yet again, only realized marginal benefits.

This one hour Webinar will address why past and present attempts at process improvement need to move beyond the traditional provider centered silo approach and more toward a patient service centric approach in order to reach the levels of ROI that commercial industry achieved decades ago.

This one hour presentation will address these questions and issues:

1. Why traditional approaches in health care have had only a small impact.
2. How to move from the limited silo view to a true patient service view.
3. Why a patient service approach is difficult to implement in healthcare.
4. Why without a true patient centered service approach to process improvement, the head long run into new technologies as EMRs and CPOEs will not achieve the cost reduction benefits that ARRA has targeted.
5. The critical role of executive management in a true service approach.
6. What are some real examples of this ‘patient service’ approach.
7. How can our organization adopt a true coordinated service approach using process re-engineering. What critical first steps do you need to complete in order to realize institution wide benefits.

Seminar Presenter:

Frank Poggio has over thirty-five years of experience in health care systems.  He has served as a hospital administrator/CFO, software entrepreneur, and industry consultant.  He has completed consulting engagements for both large and small hospitals and clinics, and major vendors of health information systems.  He is President of The Kelzon Group, which focuses on health systems issues.  Previously, he was General Manager of Mediware, Inc., a clinical software company.  He served as President of Citation Computer Systems, Inc., a St. Louis based clinical software company acquired by Cerner ,Inc.  In 1980, Mr. Poggio founded Health Micro Data Systems (HMDS), a firm specializing in client server based systems for health care organizations.  HMDS’ clinical and financial software was installed in over 120 hospitals and other health facilities around the country. 

Richard Reynolds is founder  (2002) and President of Reynolds Management Services health systems consulting firm.  Prior to that he worked at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics for 24 years, becoming Vice President for Management Engineering and Regional Services.  Mr. Reynolds has conducted successful workflow improvement, quality improvement and cost reduction studies in virtually all areas of hospital and clinic operations.  He has consulted throughout the US and internationally with more than 100 organizations on issues related to staffing,  scheduling, patient flow, benchmarking, quality improvement and patient and staff satisfaction.     He has taught graduate and post-graduate courses in Industrial Engineering for Bradley University and the University of New Haven. He holds a BSME(IO) degree in Industrial Engineering from Notre Dame and graduate degrees from Ohio State and Wisconsin. He is a Fellow and Life Member of HIMSS and has actively served on many HIMSS committees.  He was elected to the HIMSS Board of Directors in 1993 and served as HIMSS Vice President 1995-1996.  He was awarded the HIMSS Distinguished Service Award in 2006 for career contributions to HIMSS and to the field of systems engineering. 

Seminar Description:

Selecting an EMR is one of the most important decisions clinic staff will have to make.  During this seminar you will learn how to minimize costs, set proper expectations, and select a system that best meets your needs by planning the selection and following a methodology that improves your chances of long term success. 
Program Agenda & Highlights

1. Learn how to plan an EMR acquisition process to make vendor selection easier, ensure a successful implementation and a good return on your investment.
2. Learn how to design simple analytical tools with an easy apples to apples vendor comparison in mind.
3. Learn to integrate subjective and objective criteria to ensure you select the vendor with the greatest possibility of long term success.
4. Understand how your vendor choices affect the different provisions and sections of your contract.
5. Learn a negotiation method that will improve your chances of getting the contract terms you want., and build a strategic business relationship in the process.

Seminar Presenter:

Michael Minton is a Strategic healthcare sales and marketing professional.  Expertise in enterprise and departmental healthcare software, diagnostic clinical instrumentation and capital equipment, and professional services with a focus on acute care providers and commercial healthcare businesses. Primary functional skills include team leadership, strategic account development, new market development, and operations with P&L responsibility.

Seminar Description:

This web seminar will help the participant implement information security within health care organizations (or other organizations for that matter). In particular, the details of the HIPAA Security Rule are explained and illustrated.  Learning objectives include:

• Apply every requirement of the HIPAA Security Rule to a health care entity.
• Describe a model of security in terms of administrative, technical, and physical safeguards.
• Construct a life cycle of compliance in terms of awareness, gap analysis, risk analysis, implementation, training, and audit.

Seminar Presenter:  Roy Rada, M.D., Ph.D.

1. M.D. Baylor College of Medicine
2. Ph.D. Computer Science Univ. Illinois
3. Many years of R&D experience in healthcare informatics
4. Author of several books about HIPAA
5. Professor of Information Systems at University of Maryland Baltimore County