Michigan HIMSS Interest Group

Minutes from Meeting Tuesday, July 9, 2002

Present in Okemos: Leon Passariello, Ned Simpson, Jim Brown, Ron Wheelock, Rick Wilkening, Tricia Buckley, Larry Schoff, Alicia Brown

No one was conferenced in.

Introductions: Everyone provided a brief introduction.

Reviewed the minutes from the June 11 meeting: They were accepted with no changes. However, upon later review, the secretary noted that on the final page, the next meeting was noted incorrectly. The minutes were updated to reflect the change.

Officer and Committee Chair Reports:

President

In Helen’s absence, Alicia told the group that we had been made a chapter as of June 13. National has sent us a check for $3,960 for membership renewals from 5/1/01 to 5/1/02. Helen has the check and will provide it to Chris. Ron W. wondered how often checks are distributed.

Action Item – Helen please let us know how often checks are distributed.

Secretary

In preparation for our chapter announcement, Alicia drafted an email to be sent to all Michigan HIMSS members and to other potential HIMSS Members. In the future, Telusys will allow an email list and will manage the list for us. We will offer an opt-out/opt-in at the web site.

We discussed how future meetings would be structured. Ned was a member of the previous MI-HIMSS chapter. Their monthly meetings rotated through various hospitals. The officers met on a different cycle. Their programs would draw up to 80-90 people. They worked with the Ohio group to present tracks and presentations. Their monthly meetings drew 30-60 people. For their presentations, the host hospital typically did half the program, often demonstrating what they were doing in IT. The other portion of the program was a vendor or someone else talking on a topic.

Larry and Tricia participate at the national level. Larry presented an advocacy committee presentation at national, and can repeat that at the local level. Other entities in HIMSS have road shows that local chapters can utilize. This needs to be investigated further.

Committee Reports

Membership

Knowing that National requires a survey once per year, Rick created a Survey and presented it to the group for review. If Telusys will support it, we will host the survey at the web site and send email with a link to web site to fill out survey. We can also have paper copies of the survey to distribute.

It would be nice to include others like Ron's Nurse Executives list, and HISA in the survey.

After discussing the survey, it was determined that Rick will also ask what their job responsibility is, and how long they have been a HIMSS member.

*Action Item -Jim will follow up with Telusys on several items, including will they support a web site database?

*Action Item – Rick will update the survey and send it back out.

*Action Item – Everyone review survey and give Rick final approval

Student involvement in the chapter - Rick has lead on getting a student. Our goal is to increase student involvement. Their membership is only $30-we will tell them we will cover membership to get their involvement. Who do we focus on at schools to get students? Heads of departments (management eng, informatics), nursing schools, Vin Sahnay (HFHS), students that are in healthcare administration in local programs, Jim Martin at U of M (was at school of public health).

Communications

Jim provided an in-depth report on the web site. Initially, Jim set up a simple web site for us, but the host was unreliable so he brought the site down. Now that we have chapter approval, we have access to Telusys’ services. Telusys will install, and host the web site at no cost to us (unless we have special needs). The fee comes out of national.

Telusys is registering the domain name mi-himss.org, They can get multiple names as well if we would like to pursue this in the future. They have our content and will put together a web map and put all our content into the site. They will also do graphics work as well. Jim asked them to consider Michigan features (lakes, cars, etc.) in their design when he spoke with them. The site can include any or all of the following:

Members only area

Public area

Calendar (we can administer)

Site statistics

Banner ads

Pop up messages

Mail list server

Contact form

Bulletin board

Ability to publish links

We can add and update content ourselves

Inside the members only area will be a member directory. All members will have a unique ID to login. This is their standard HIMSS login ID and password. They can look up members, manage contact information. Rick added that per Susan Delhey, the members only area is updated every Friday. The group has given Jim the authority to get the web site up and get textual content out there. Jim will run things by the group. Alicia offered additional support if he needs it. Jim believes we should be able to have the content up in the next 1-2 weeks.

Programs

Ron has arranged Bruce Bradley for our keynote speaker for our first program. Based on his availability, the program will be held Tuesday, October 15. We don't know the honorarium yet.

Bruce has also agreed to meet with the board the night of October 14. We will get funds to take him and the group out to dinner. Bruce has sent Ron a list of speeches that he does. Ron will review those.

The morning program will include:

8-9 am registration and continental breakfast

Helen will do introductions

Bruce will speak for 60 minutes

1/2 hr break - vendor gallery coffee/refreshments

2nd keynote address for 60 minutes

Final closing/thanks

Wrap up by noon

We will also announce our winter session at that time, our spring session too if possible. Given the desire to make this a high profile program, it is felt that the Novi - Southfield area is the key spot for 1st show. Both the Hotel Barronette and Novi Hilton were booked. Ron is meeting with Laurel Manor, and the St. John Golf & Conference center. Ron is also looking for room to book that is expandable. He expects costs will be approximately $10 per head for food. We discussed the possibility of using hospital location, not a conference center location.

*Action Item – Alicia will talk to Providence about using their auditorium, services, etc. for HIMSS presentations.

We will add the first program announcement to our chapter announcement. How do we get additional publicity? - MI Tech News, Great Lakes IT Report, Crain's Tech and any other methods we can use. Jim also suggested Computer Directory News and Automation Alley as places to advertise.

*Action Item – All investigate what other groups can get us free publicity.

*Action Item – Ron budget breakdown by next time

*Action Item – Ron & Leon meeting to discuss sponsors

Ron proposes that we provide 3-4 levels of sponsorship (bronze, silver, gold) Benefits will include their logo on material, etc. Ron passed around a proposal for sponsorship and will email it to everyone.

*Action Item – Ron will send out sponsor proposal electronically

Since our first program is patient safety we should solicit vendors in the patient safety realm. We would like to gain $10K with our first program. If we can cover speakers out of our own pocket, then member money for the program would cover incidentals (food,badges, etc). Sponsorship can be for 1 program or for more (1-3 years).

Given that we only have 3 more monthly meetings for planning, Ron suggests we have bimonthly meetings by phone to keep things moving (every other Tuesday). Everyone agreed that we would do this.

*Action Items – Alicia will send email out announcing additional meetings to working group. Helen will follow up on conference call for meetings.

We began a discussion on who should be the second keynote speaker and what the topic should be, within the realm of patient safety. Perhaps lessons learned? Judith Pelham from Trinity is big on patient safety & barcoding. Larry suggesting someone from National, Carla Smith at meeting in Las Vegas gave a good presentation, but not specific to any strategy--other national folks may help us kick off. National speakers are "free" to us if they have spoken at other HIMSS events. Ron would like to see Michigan people for that focus.

Patrick O'Hare the CIO of Spectrum Health is the keynote at the HISA conference which has been moved to October 11. We should work to cross-pollinate programs to advertise with HISA.

*Action Item –Tricia will check with National to see if there are any charges to use a national spealer. Does their coverage include speakers' travel?

*Action Item –Ron will look at two places above and make a decision on a location.

We anticipate the cost of the program will be $25-$35 for 1/2 day program for members. Other chapters charged different rate for non-members (nominal upgrade). We can also add an incentive to the survey. If people fill out the survey at the web site, they get a reduced program cost - for members only. Can we track this at the web site?

*Action Item – Jim will see if Telusys can handle tracking survey participation and if they are set up to accept Visa.

Leon opened a discussion for the group to help clearly identify our goals. To truly meet the needs of the healthcare IT community, we need to clearly understand our value proposition. What is the value proposition of attending programs? Michigan offers unique dynamics because of the diversity of it’s members from various parts of the state. Leon suggested that our mentality should be that we are starting business. Therefore we need to identify what is the market, who is our competition, etc.

He feels we have a unique opportunity to fill a need that is not being met by other Michigan HIT organizations, including CHIME. As our offer stands for our goals and programs, it may not be sufficiently compelling to ‘C-levels’ within the providers and payors. However, if we focus on truly solving their problems and maintaining an open forum for discussion rather than get mired in vendor sales efforts or politics, we should be very successful.

In terms of program offerings, training is a big issue and lessons learned is a good spin for the programs. Also important are recruitment, patient safety and showing C-levels how to do more with less in these days of increased budget cuts. Leon feels we should leverage local market dynamics and market memberships in bunches within each organization. To do that however, it has to fit in the business plan of the CIO. Once Leon knew of the new HIMSS group forming, he mandated memberships for his directors to strengthen that networking of peers.

As we discussed these issues, it became widely apparent to the group that Leon would be an excellent speaker for our first program. Leon agreed that he would be the second speaker for our October 15 program.

*Action Item – Leon will be our 2nd speaker, Ron will follow up with him regarding

We continued discussion on program offerings and features. In addition to sponsor levels, we may want to offer smaller opportunities for small companies that want to participate but don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to do so. For example, we could offset costs of name tags or breakfast specifically and display logos of the sponsoring organizations. We should include consultants as potential vendor sponsors. There are many small local consultant groups that are also HIMSS members. Also, we should keep our focus on Michigan vendors. We will continue work on the winter program as well . An additional question for our survey should be, “what initiatives are you pursuing at your organization?”

*Action Item – Rick add “what initiatives are you pursuing at your organization?” to survey

Jim suggested we could have a competition of vendors to solve a problem, such as positive patient ID, and give them 15 minutes to address the problem. Leon conveyed that method frustrates him and creates division in organization, because the CIO has to manage everyone getting information. The CIO is often in pain because of multiple forces, our goals should be directed toward how we make their pain go away. Leon likes tapping into other organizations (ACHEs, Healthcare Advisory Board** and other C level orgs). The difficulty is that some organizations can be behind the times and not provide good counsel to CIOs. However, providing good, relevant, timely, accurate information packaged and bundled to bridge gap at C level in orgs is of extraordinary value in today’s Michigan healthcare market. As much as possible we want to foster communication in ‘C level’ group. To appeal to the C-levels and others, we should provide a portfolio of offerings as programs. Training sessions for “DNA level” disciplines like project management, make it easier for CIOs to buy program attendance. Tricia felt that if we marry our chapter announcement with the first program that this is a good recruitment tool and will show everyone what is coming.

We also need to determine the value proposition for vendors as well. Opportunities we are offering vendors include participation in focus groups, providing them a map for planning their services, getting dialogs open, and most important, making a contribution to and being part of Michigan healthcare initiatives. what value $ is good for vendors Larry raised the experience of $900 for vendor access to potential 20,000 customer types. Given potential opportunities, what is the value of participation to various sponsors?

On behalf of the group, I would like to sincerely thank Leon for his valuable insights.

*Action Item – All derive ideas regarding the value proposition for vendors and C-levels to participate in and sponsor HIMSS programs and the chapter

Advisory Group

Helen and Ron met with James Barkles (spelling?) from Crain’s Detroit. We will plan to bring him into a future meeting to see what we are about-he would include us as a reference of authority within another article to build our credibility. We can also leverage him as an advisor for future.

*Action Item – Helen will invite James to an upcoming meeting.

Rick will continue to try to reach Dr. Coffey, Alicia offered Dr. Jeffrey Zaks, VPMA of Providence Hospital and Medical Centers, Southfield. Leon can pose the question to the physicians in the Osteopathic program at Mt. Clemens. We want to include advisors from up state, mid Michigan and above. We will get insights from Ron Latta. This may also help us recruit members from that area. We will begin contacts in Traverse and other areas to get advisors.

*Action Item – Rick will go through the membership list to find appropriate people in the western and northern parts of the state. He will disseminate the list to all people who will call to generate an advisory group.

*Action Item – Ron is working on a 1 page flyer for our first program, he will give this to Jim to get it on the web site as well.

*Action Item – Jim will investigate getting us additional conference call capabilities if needed

*Action Item – Alicia will send Ron electronic copy of chapter announcement email

*Action Item – All will approach vendors companies about sponsorships

*Action Item – Ron will derive a program budget based on proposed numbers

*Action Item – Ron is creating a checklist of pre-event todos

*Action Item – Reliance Software will loan their LCD projector for programs

Next steps

ü Jim will follow up with Telusys on several items, including will they support a web site database?

ü Rick will update the survey and send it back out.

ü Everyone review survey and give Rick final approval

ü Alicia will talk to Providence about using their auditorium, services, etc. for HIMSS presentations.

ü All investigate what other groups can get us free publicity.

ü Ron budget breakdown by next time

ü Ron & Leon meeting to discuss sponsors

ü Ron will send out sponsor proposal electronically

ü Alicia will send email out announcing additional meetings to working group.

ü Helen will follow up on conference call for meetings.

ü Tricia will check with National to see if there are any charges to use a national spealer. Does their coverage include speakers' travel?

ü Ron will look at two places above and make a decision on a location.

ü Jim will see if Telusys can handle tracking survey participation and if they are set up to accept Visa.

ü Leon will be our 2nd speaker, Ron will follow up with him regarding

ü Rick add “what initiatives are you pursuing at your organization?” to survey

ü All derive ideas regarding the value proposition for vendors and C-levels to participate in and sponsor HIMSS programs and the chapter

ü Helen will invite James to an upcoming meeting.

ü Rick will go through the membership list to find appropriate people in the western and northern parts of the state. He will disseminate the list to all people who will call to generate an advisory group.

ü Ron is working on a 1 page flyer for our first program, he will give this to Jim to get it on the web site as well.

ü Jim will investigate getting us additional conference call capabilities if needed

ü Alicia will send Ron electronic copy of chapter announcement email

ü All will approach vendors companies about sponsorships

ü Ron will derive a program budget based on proposed numbers

ü Ron is creating a checklist of pre-event todos

ü Reliance Software will loan their LCD projector for programs

Next Meeting:

By phone, Tuesday, July 23 at 3 pm via conference call. Helen will provide us a dial-up number. Next full meeting will be on Tuesday, August 13 at 3 pm, Covansys in Okemos - directions will be provided through email.

Meetings are currently scheduled for the second Tuesday of every month in Okemos and the fourth Tuesday of the month via conference call. Okemos meeting dates for the rest of the year are: September 10, October 8, November 12, and December 10.

Communication:

To join the working group email list, contact Alicia Brown at abrown@relware.com

To communicate with everyone in the HIMSS Michigan Chapter Working Group, send email to himss-mi@yahoogroups.com