Once again, the Chilmark team is headed to Orlando for another HIMSS Global Conference and Exhibition. While many focus on the excitement in the exhibit hall and evening networking events, there is also a wealth of wisdom shared in educational sessions throughout the convention center all week. 

Here are our annual recommendations from the analyst team, organized according to our domains of research. We plan to attend many of these sessions, so if you would like to meet up afterward, please feel free to email anyone on the team to coordinate meeting at the session to discuss a topic further.

Analytics

Making Prescriptive Analytics Work for Clinicians

Wednesday, March 11, 1:00-2:00pm, W304A

Speakers:

• Bommae Kim, Ph.D, Senior Data Scientist, University of Virginia Health System
• Jonathan Michel, Ph.D, Director of Data Science, University of Virginia Health System

Why Attend: Getting anyone to act based on analytics is a challenge for organizations. Clinicians are more likely to demand proof of efficacy than most other kinds of users. This session might have some ideas about getting users comfortable with the idea that analytics can or should tell them what to do.

Validation and Regulatory Oversight of Clinical AI Tools

Tuesday, March 10, 10:30-11:30am, W230A

Speakers:

• Wade Schulz, MD, Ph.D, Director of Informatics, Yale School of Medicine
• Harlan Krumholz, MD, SM, Professor, Yale School of Medicine

Why Attend: With the recent Practice Fusion settlement putting CDS in the headlines, the goals and directions of FDA oversight over AI/ML and algorithm-driven medicine deserve significant attention. The most recent FDA draft guidance has serious implications for manufacturers and customers of these tools, especially in the crucial area of transparency and black box/white box approaches.

Care Management

Using Analytics to Drive Patient-Centered Post-Acute Care

Wednesday, March 11, 1:00-2:00pm, W414A

Speakers:

• Jamie L. Reedy, MD, MPH, Chief Population Health Officer, Summit Health Management
• Amina A. Ahmed, MD, Chief of Hospital Medicine and Post Acute Care, Summit Medical Management

Why Attend: Summit Medical Group, a large healthcare organization in New Jersey, is going to share how they navigate patients through their care journey and analyze the data produced as a result. Given their size, Summit should have some great insights into making this process both efficient and effective.

Addressing EHR Burnout in a Psychiatric Hospital Setting

Tuesday, March 10, 12:00-1:00pm, W330A

Speakers:

• Damian Jankowicz, Ph.D, VP Information Management, CIO, CPO, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
• Tania Tajirian, MD, CMIO, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Why Attend: Behavioral health and psychiatric settings have some of the most stressful, difficult, and complex physician loads in healthcare. However, for a variety of reasons, they are often under-resourced and under-addressed. With increasing attention being paid to physician burnout and the complicating factors that EHRs introduce into the physician workflow and professional load, psychiatric settings can offer sorely needed insights into how to relieve the burdens of physicians working with complex, often polychronic populations.

Engagement

Driving to Value through Patient Engagement and Care Access

Tuesday, March 10, 12:00-1:00pm, W206A

Speaker:

• Kelli Bravo, MBA, MS, VP Healthcare and Life Sciences, PegaSystems Inc.

Why Attend: Given the rise of consumerism in healthcare, it is more important than ever to reevaluate and improve upon existing patient engagement strategies. This session is directly focused on the technology and techniques necessary for performing this task.

Digital Principles that Improve Patient Outcomes

Wednesday, March 11, 12:45-1:05pm, Hall A Booth 480

Speaker:

• Dave Norton, Ph.D, Founder & Principal, Stone Mantel & the Digital Collaboratives

Why Attend: A short session (easy to fit in busy schedules) with a jam-packed agenda of important topics. This session should provide great information about how modern digital tools can be leveraged to craft care for the modern patient’s life, improving engagement.

Interoperability

Da Vinci Multi-stakeholder FHIR Initiatives Accelerate Adoption: Advancing Data Interoperability to Improve Patient Care, Provider Workflow and Population Health

Monday, March 9, 1:15-2:15pm, W230A

Speakers:

• Nancy Beavin, Director, Program Delivery, Humana Inc
• Paul Oates, FHIMSS, Senior Enterprise Architect, Cigna
• Rich Cullen, VP, Inter-Plan Solutions, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association

Why Attend: Project Da Vinci represents an effort to leverage FHIR and bring modern ideas of distributed computing to payers. Providers also need to understand how this FHIR accelerator will complement their efforts.

*This session is a part of a pre-conference symposium and requires a separate registration fee.

Payer Enablement: Population Health Management Through HIE

Wednesday, March 11, 11:30am-12:30pm, W204A

Speakers:

• Mujtaba Ali-Khan, DO, Assoc. Division Chief Medical Officer, HCA Houston Healthcare
• Nick Bonvino, Chief Executive Officer, Greater Houston Healthconnect
• Robert Morrow, MD, Southeast Texas Market President, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas

Why Attend: Greater Houston Healthconnect (GHH) operates in a very large metropolitan area and supports a range of services for primer and payer members. These services include support for a number of value-based arrangements.

Population Health Management

FHIR, Interop, and SDoH: Turning “Hot” Topics Into Actionable Outcomes

Tuesday, March 10, 12:00-1:00pm, W208C

Speakers:

• Heather Jordan Cartwright, General Manager Health Cloud & Data, Microsoft Healthcare NeXT, Microsoft
• Marc Willard, SVP, Digital Health & Analytics – Platform Innovation & Strategic Partnerships, Humana

Why Attend: As VBC becomes the norm, healthcare organizations must cooperate with a wide variety of community partners to address SDoH. Managing care in this way requires managing a lot of diverse data, and a specific conversation about the intersection between coordinating SDoH-centric care and data management should be very useful.

Navigating America’s Hidden Healthcare Crisis: Homelessness

Wednesday, March 11, 1:00-2:00pm, W330A

Speaker:

• Ronn Berrol, MD, Medical Director, Summit/Oakland Campus, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center

Why Attend: This session will help health system officials identify the impact of homelessness on ED resources, develop and evaluate safer discharge and transition of care of homeless patients, and the role of technology to support these strategies. The session will also address how to connect with other community resources to maximize the impact for patients after they leave the hospital.

Provider-Payer Convergence

Helping PCPs Transition to New Payment Models

Wednesday, March 11, 4:00-5:00pm, W208C

Speakers:

• Gabe Orthous, MBA, Chief Information Officer, Central Georgia Health Network
• Jodi Ingram, MBA-HM, BSN, RN, VP Quality & Population Health, Central Georgia Network

Why Attend: Not all providers are as engaged in value-based care effort as they could be. This organization should have some great lessons learned after working with a diverse set of practices in a large geographic area.

Driving Value: Automating Prior Authorization at the Point of Care

Wednesday. March 11, 8:30-9:30am, W204A

Speakers:

• Jim Wieland, SVP, General Manager of Speciality Health, Magellan Healthcare
• Scott Weingarten, MD, MPH, SVP & Cheif Clinical Transformation, Cedars-Sinai Health System

Why Attend: Complicated by different payers’ requirements and a patchwork of state regulations, prior auth remains a seemingly intractable complication for the hospital and provider revenue cycle. Various products and platforms offer some variety of automation and outsourcing, but it’s difficult to know what kind of solution to look for. Examples of implemented, successful best practices are elusive but offer the best opportunity to see how this problem can be attacked.