October 25, 2009
I speak to all of you as I bask in the afterglow of the most recent Delaware Valley / New Jersey HIMSS Annual Conference in Atlantic City (full disclosure – I am the Chapter President of the NJ HIMSS Chapter so perhaps I am at least a tad guilty of “proud papa” syndrome” as I write). From an attendance perspective, our numbers were up over 50% from last year’s well-attended conference. Largely due to all the buzz about health IT and all the money being funneled into it, I no longer am at a loss to explain what I do at cocktail parties these days; folks from all walks of life are all over this. The risk to all this (at least as it relates to cocktail parties) is that you can, in the most inopportune of places, get caught up in detailed discussions with people about such strikingly non-cocktail party chatter as spirited debates on exactly who owns one’s medical information and precisely how would organizations should secure health data that resides in a health information exchange.
August 20, 2009
I am watching the health care reform debate swirling around our country with a substantial degree of horror. This has got to be one of the most profound debates our country has had in decades, with legitimate concerns and opportunities offered by both sides, but yet as we learn about about the evolving “discussion” in the mass media, there is pretty much zero analyses of the facts and implications of the various options being considered.
June 30, 2009 Rich Temple
My organization, AristaCare Health Services, based in South Plainfield, NJ, owns and operates five skilled nursing facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We are growing rapidly, anticipating more than doubling in size within the next few months, and have been savvy enough to realize the criticality of bringing state-of-the-art technology to all aspects of operational, clinical, and financial processes.
June 6, 2009
Staying on top of the “advocacy” and legislative functions has always been important for health IT leaders, but never more so than now. With
April 8, 2009
It was a very good and very fun HIMSS. Got to connect with old friends, meet new ones, and have the chance to get a pretty good lay-of-the-land of
April 2, 2009
We at AristaCare Health Services in New Jersey just signed a significant deal with ABS System Consultants, based in Toronto, CA, for what is going to
March 13, 2009
We have, as an industry, a once-in-a-generation chance to be able to “change the game” as far as health IT is concerned. The recently-enacted HITECH
February 2, 2009
I look at the news swirling around me about health care information technology being one of the BIG 5 PRIORITIES for our new President with a mix of shock, awe, and actually, maybe a little bit of apprehension. While it is incredibly exciting to see one’s professional passion validated on such a grand level, the buzz around health IT and the feeding frenzy around the money likely to be allocated to health IT as part of the economic stimulus bill winding its way through Congress are almost disconcerting.
January 14, 2009 Rich Temple
While some of us health care information technology folks were initially rather bowled over by this report upon its release, given its less-than-glowing assessment of how health IT has directly impacted the provision of care, a closer read and some time for reflection offers some very positive opportunities.
January 5, 2009
Much has been discussed about reforming the clearly dysfunctional healthcare reimbursement structure in the United States. People are paying more
