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Hotels open up for HIMSS13

Here’s a quick travel update for those of you still making plans for HIMSS13 in New Orleans next month. Today, OnPeak, the travel service that HIMSS has contracted with, seems to have released a number of hotel rooms for the week of the conference.

I had been waiting to book for a few weeks since I first heard that rooms would open on Jan. 30 or so after vendors, which apparently claimed big blocks of rooms months ago, had to give their final numbers. That didn’t happen, and I was starting to sweat a bit. But I made my reservation today, and am near enough to the Morial Convention Center that I don’t have to worry if I miss the last shuttle of the evening, which I’ve done plenty of times in past years. I feel bad for anyone staying out by the airport in Metairie or Kenner, because that’s a good 10-13 miles away. From my experience in other HIMSS cities, those bus trips can easily take 45 minutes to an hour during rush hour, and the buses don’t run all that frequently. HIMSS won’t be going back to San Diego anytime soon because so many people had to stay out by La Jolla the last time the conference was there in 2006, and that is closer to the San Diego Convention Center than the airport hotels are in New Orleans.

Back then,  seven years ago, attendance had swelled to a then-record 25,000, and stayed in that range for a couple of years. But then came the HITECH Act and meaningful use in 2009, and interest in health IT has soared. Last year, more than 37,000 people came to HIMSS12 in Las Vegas, where hotels are plentiful. The Big Easy might not be as big a draw as Sin City, but it might be for some people who prefer authentic culture to the manufactured kind. (For the record, I like both places.) I’ve heard registration was slower this year than last, but I didn’t get that directly from HIMSS.

If you do find yourself stuck, I did notice in the last couple of weeks that there are a good number of hotels with vacancies across the Mississippi River in Gretna and Marrero and points east, such as Chalmette and New Orleans East. But there is no HIMSS shuttle to those places, and good luck finding a car to rent unless you’re willing to spend $90 a day. Go ahead, search for a car rental with airport pickup and try to find one for less during the week of March 3. (You can get one from an off-airport location for about $31 a day if you’re willing to take a taxi into town first to pick it up.)

This leads me to wonder if this might be the last time for a while that HIMSS meets in New Orleans. I think a couple of extra shuttle routes could fix the problem. And if attendance does level off or even drop a bit since we’ve probably passed the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle, then it’s all good. Given some of the recent pushback against the direction of meaningful use and the efficacy of current EHR technology, I think it’s safe to say we are in or headed to the trough of disillusionment this year.

I’ll have more later this week about HIMSS, including what I’m trying to get from the conference. Vendors, please pay attention. I’m finally about to start working on my schedule, but I will have specific objectives.

 

February 11, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Podcast: Gartner’s Vi Shaffer on HIE, ACOs and meaningful use

Back in June, I covered the Wisconsin Technology Network’s Digital Healthcare Conference in Madison. That conference featured a panel with Vi Shaffer, research vice president and industry services director for healthcare providers at Gartner, Judy Murphy, vice president of information services at Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee, and Epic Systems CEO Judy Faulkner, based in nearby Verona, Wis.

The panel discussed the question, “Is meaningful use a floor or a ceiling?” as I reported for WTN News. The conference also featured several sessions on how business intelligence and health information exchange can support Accountable Care Organizations.

A month later, I saw Shaffer again at AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection meeting in Ojai, Calif. There, she presented preliminary data from Gartner’s annual survey of CMIOs. After the conference ended, I got a chance to sit down with Shaffer for this podcast. Since the fog and clouds finally lifted on the final day, we decided to record this outdoors at the beautiful Ojai Valley Inn, which is why you will hear some birds and other (human) creatures in the background. We don’t care, it was too nice to sit indoors.

We mostly discussed how HIE can support ACOs, but we also touched on meaningful use and health reform in this lively interview. Enjoy.

Podcast details: Interview with Vi Shaffer, research vice president and industry services director for healthcare providers at Gartner. Recorded July 15, 2011, in Ojai, Calif. MP3, mono, 64 kbps, 7.9 MB. Running time 17:14.

1:35 ACO as a business model and a fundamental change in the needs of patients (chronic disease)

3:00 Interoperability for care coordination 3:50 Will ACO model be better than disease management as it exists today?

4:50 Nature of proposed rules

7:30 Importance of innovation because “meeting the metrics is average.”

9:05 Is meaningful use a floor or a ceiling? Is an ACO a floor or a ceiling?

10:46 Ambulatory services growing faster than hospital services

12:38 “Oligopolies” in healthcare building interoperability and continuums of care

14:40 How far can you go with interoperability in this changing healthcare climate?

15:19 Targeted panel management rather than population health

August 12, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.