Michigan HIMSS Interest Group
Minutes from
Meeting Friday, February 6, 2004
Strategic
Planning Meeting
If you cannot attend the bimonthly planning
meetings in person, please call in!
These meetings are held on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. The toll free dial in number is: (866) 680-0146. Enter the participant code of 297455. Our host is Helen Hill.
Attending: Helen Hill, Ron Wheelock, Ken Risko, Jan Cepiga, Jennifer Horowitz, Rick Wilkening, Satish Nagarajan, Jeff Pfund, Dann Lemerand.
Today’s meeting was held in-person from 12-4 pm at Reliance Software Systems in Farmington Hills. General discussion continued and introductions were made as we enjoyed lunch together.
Review of Minutes
Minutes were reviewed and accepted by the group.
The group reviewed the bullet points from our May Strategic Planning group. Everyone agreed that the topics were still concerns and action items.
We began the presentations with Satish, current co-chair of the Communication committeee. He told us that the committee now has four participants. This was expanded in January. They had their first committee meeting last week and have planned to meet every three weeks. Their goal is to involve up to 10 people.
We reviewed membership through the fourth quarter. Membership grew to 260. Our goal is to establish active, sustainable membership committee. The goal is to make this happen by Q2. This will make the chapter more valuable and more attractive to current and future members. We need to have a value proposition for involving people. We want to grow segments, especially Academic faculty and students. This is the lowest membership that we have in all sectors. The faculty members can also help engage the students and keep them focused on involvement. Rick is exploring this and going to various schools to present this.
The strategy was developed to meet the goals using the following process: Interviewed members to understand interests and unmet needs. Analyzed current membership to segment membership. Recruited forward thinking high-energy individuals to guide membership committee in its formative process.
There was a consistent message that came out of the interviews. 1. HIMSS does not have enough envets to make membership ex=citing. Most members are looki ng for free or low cost events every 4-6 weeks. 2. MI-HIMSS is not active in discussion the healthcare issues important in Michigan. Other organizations that compared well were MHA, HAHIMA, Scottsdale Institute, WEC (Women’s Economic Club), Detroit Economic Club. 3. MI-HIMSS needs to deliver more educational programming to help improve the careers and skills of our members.
People are willing to participate, especially if the programs are at their location. Satish has spoken with various hospitals who have said they would be more than willing to host programs if the admission was free or very low cost for their people.
Jennifer suggested we look at other chapters and how they do their programming. The DC chapter has monthly meetings and they are extremely successful. Dallas/Fort Worth and Minneapolis are both very successful in engaging members.
They did some segmentation on the Psychographics of the group. People in the higher level of the pool were most interested in networking. People are interested in EMRs, current technology, sharing information, the Leapfrog Group and more. Many expressed interest in leadership opportunities in Michigan healthcare.
Segmenting the demographics, they determined that the short-term target was students and faculty as mentioned above. They asked people to consider if they would or would not use a computer in healthcare. This was stressed in the presentations and people agreed. The main composition of the group of members includes healthcare executives, entrepreneurs, and consultants. They believe that they can more effectively engage new groups such as clinicians, middle management and again, students and faculty. Once the faculty and students are engaged, they think the next segment to explore and involve are middle management.
The proposed strategy is to:
- Build the membership committee
- Recruit some academic faculty into the membership committee
- Aggressively recruit students and faculty as members
- Work with the events committee to plan, coordinate and execute more events throughout the year
The more people that membership can bring, the more involvement we get which supports additional programs, etc. The presentations will always be relatively tied to a specific geographic pool. There is considerable interest there, but we need to trap it. It is most important to build the committee first. The tactical plan includes getting more events going.
In addition to Satish and Rick, they have also involved Tim Roberts, Practice Director from Cerner Corp and Mike Yaskanin, Director, PPOM.
Satish and Rick were congratulated on the depth and breadth of their presentation. Ron made the point that more frequent meetings is definitely a goal. He set this as a priority as well. He suggested that the way to lay out smaller events is to get the committees to meet frequently, host it in an appropriate location, then we send a speaker.
The issue is it is most convenient to host these meetings in SE Michigan, but we know that the people in outlying areas are still uninvolved. Satish agreed that if we can set up a circuit of presentations and “automate” the process, this would help. Ron questioned the messages that came out of the member interviews. He felt the message of delivering more educational programming conflicted with the day-long programs of healthcare issues important in Michigan. Satish acknowledged this and said there is a general sense that the needs are not being met.
Jennifer noted that the Spring conference brings a great opportunity to span interest in Michigan. Being an election year, the topic Funding for Healthcare Initiatives will be very popular and Michigan is in a strategic position for this.
Rick talked about our ability to facilitate classes and training on behalf of National to local hospitals. We can investigate bring CP classes locally.
Satish noted that we have plenty of National speakers in Michigan, but aren’t involving them at the chapter level. Alicia noted that while it is true, we were in conflict with HISA who was already engaging these people. The people we want to engage are definitely active and joiners which helps open the opportunity.
Treasurer’s Report
Ken printed us a report out of Quicken. The Income/Expense report of the year was reviewd. The October 2002 conference did appear in the list because some dollars were realized
Income ranges between $4 - $8,000 depending on the size of the conference. We have made money on every conference. We have a total income of $24,980.49 with total expenses of $14,600.59. We have not received expenses from the December keynote speaker nor from the July keynote. Also, we still are looking to get sponsor checks from Healthlink and Superior Consultant Company. Our profit was just over $2,000, but this does not include expenses for Marion.
Helen talked to HISA who enjoyed working with us. She talked to Jo Molle of HISA about their involvement in HIMSS and being the Regional Advisory Council for the SE Detroit area. Jo stated that they would be interested, because they are very committed to furthering HIT in Michigan, but are overworked on setting up programs, etc. Most of them belong to HIMSS anyway.
Ken addressed smaller conferences more frequently through the state. This will make the financial side more complex. He also has some concerns about the ability of Telusys to manage that many registrations consistently. We were wondering if HIMSS relationship with Telusys will continue due to issues we have had in the past. There was no information available about this.
Ron wondered if we should set aside some budget money for HIMSS trinkets. Would something like this help us as a recruiting aid? He also mentioned a wall certificate as “Member, Michigan HIMSS” that would add value to the membership. This could be done for reasonably low cost by buying frames in bulk and printing. We can send a welcome packet to new members.
Jan can get us some estimates on pen and/or paper products. Dann offered to investigate these options as well. Ron would like to see an annual expense account established for trinkets. Discussion continued on what would be the best “goodies.” Dann suggested a lanyard of “Michigan HIMSS” that could be reused. Helen had suggested that goodies should go to people that attend conferences, which this would facilitate. Jennifer says pens are devalued, because so many are handed out by various vendors. Both Ron and Jennifer said that magnets and sticky pads are always popular.
ACTION ITEM: Jan and Dann will investigate trinkets and pricing.
Ken wondered if we had a sense of what the annual budget should be for trinkets. Dann suggested that $1,000 - $2,000 would be reasonable. However, we suggested it could be reduced and still get us volume and quality.
Jennifer presented updates on what is happening at National HIMSS.
Ron would like to schedule a conference call soon when we return so we can talk about what happened while it’s fresh. Other chapters have expressed interest in working with our chapter at the National meeting. National will expand out to chapters
There is a formal dinner of awards and presentations on Tuesday as well. A Nursing Informatics symposium and Physician symposium are also being held on Sunday.
Sunday 11-5, Chapter Leadership Workshop
They do a number of things at the meeting. Steve Leiber will speak as well as Dave Roberts. They will review the Advocacy position and present that. Jennifer thinks this is fairly open and is networking related.
Sunday, 6 - , SIG Group meeting after the Chapter Leadership Workshop
Jennifer will send the agenda to Alicia who will send to the group. Alicia will send it out to the group.
Rick, Helen and Alicia will all be at HIMSS and will contact each other on Sunday to attend the Chapter Leadership Workshop.
Jennifer then addressed the Communications committee. Jan’s wife is graciously helping us maintain and update the web site. She’s made several changes that we should review.
One of their challenges is changing the web site. They will talk to Telusys because some of this is more in their control.
The newsletter is moving forward slowly, but Jennifer thinks the best time would be after conference to sum up what happened in Orlando, broadcast our Spring conference. Our newsletter will be relatively short, probably a couple of pages to start.
ACTION ITEM: Alicia will email all previous minutes and agendas to Jan for publishing at the web site.
Helen suggested we also see what other chapters are doing at their web sites and for their newsletters. Dann suggested looking at the DC chapter. Jennifer also mentioned Health Tech Net in DC, which Dann belongs to. Jennifer thinks the political climate is excellent for building momentum between now and November.
Helen believes we need to involve a broad group to be able to pull off the Funding conference. She acknowledged that we would be competing to get the key speakers, but would be of great value.
We still need to find an Advocacy Liaison. Jennifer said there are probably 20 chapters that have Advocacy Liaisons. Helen wondered if they have transcripts of the calls.
Rick suggested additional filler for the newsletter. We can publish anniversary dates of HIMSS members. Rick said we have a member that has been in HIMSS since the 60’s.
Program Committee
Ron reviewed his draft of the Program and Events Committee Annual Report for 2003 and Action Plan for 2004. The chapter objectives are the ones we originally developed for the chapter. One goal of this draft is to make it useable for all committees.
Ron is also looking to regularly schedule subcommittee meetings to better coordinate events. The document reviews roles and responsibilities, 2003 accomplishments. He also laid out our strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats to our success.
Ron’s review had us questioning membership growth. Rick believes that we lost a spike in membership in 2003 that we gained in 2004.
Ron wondered what committee Dann would like to be part of. He expressed an interest in membership. Dann talked about the hospitals in the UP and engaging them. He would like to be more involved in this. The CIO group that meets from these hospitals can be approached by HIMSS to help further get their interest. Helen stressed that Dann work with Elaine to make sure she is engaged in this activity. (Thanks Dann!)
ACTION ITEM: Dann will work with Elaine to further engage HIT individuals in the UP.
Ron continued to review his Action Plan. As he reviewed further we talked about how to expand speaker interest. One idea was to have breakfast events or after work events at various hospitals to help defray costs of programs. Helen suggested we would get different participants for the smaller programs. Ron agreed, especially if our focus is on education.
Jeff volunteered to help Ron with the Program Committee. (Thanks Jeff!)
Helen talked about engaging vendors for support, while being careful to engage them to speak. We still want to be thoughtful about too much involvement from vendors. We need to remain relatively unbiased.
National recently released some products, like a bar code handbook. Jennifer suggested that we can tie the products to presentations. IAG Connect-a-thon This would tie into getting a different audience. We may also be able to tie them to CEUs.
Jennifer sees in the member satisfaction surveys that people would like to participate in training and furthering education at the National level but can’t attend the annual conference. We should look into more closely linking to what is happening in National. We could have Michigan presenters reprise what they talked about, and also provide training sessions potentially.
Rick sees CIOs who are interested in bringing training to their locations. This helps open up this opportunity.
Jennifer stressed that involving people out of clinical informatics can help expand the group. She believes this is a strongly untapped group that would bring great value to the organization. Ron talked about MHIA who are having problems sustaining themselves—we may be able to engage them further. He’s talked with a woman at Genesys (Sue) regarding this and would like to engage her more as well. Helen suggested that we need to keep aware of the revenue cycle, seeing the change in hospitals who have older systems. HFMA may not be very active either.
Having a two-tier price structure may help bring in people to the chapter in general. We want to take greater advantage of people who are coming to our programs who are not members. Rick mentioned a quick hit statement to engage them. Helen suggested we talk to them soon fter the event to engage them as members.
Should the newsletter go out to just members? Jennifer suggests we can send it to anyone who may want to be engaged. Ron’s concern is that devalues the newsletter because it is now “free,” this applies to any service we would provide. Membership should have its privileges, so what are those?
Rick wondered: what is the newsletter’s purpose? Marketing or value-added to membership? Jennifer thinks that we can use it as a tool to engage others to enhance the leadership core—so, marketing. Helen suggested that we could send a couple out then ask for membership once they have received some newsletters. GLIMA opens up events for free and often gets up to 40 people.
Rick has been asked what limitations there are for corporate members. We have none, we’d like everyone’s involvement! Helen thinks the misconception is coming from CHIME and other organizations that limit an organizations’ members based upon their corporate sponsorship. We want to make it clear that everyone is welcome, and not only IT—we are interested in all of healthcare.
Jennifer mentioned Health TechNet again in DC. They have been great at getting key involvement from CIOs of large, influential organizations. Jennifer found the dynamics of the group to be strong and interesting, we’d like to emulate that here.
Ron suggested that we survey people at the web site. Jennifer, who regularly does surveys, suggested that the truly effective way is to push it to members several times and they will respond. Additional incentives help support that. National offered 40 people an on-line gift certificate to up to 40 randomly selected people who respond to surveys. Jeff furthered this with broadcasting that back to all participants so people know it is a real incentive.
Ron continued to review his action plan, including threats such as possibilities of re-using vendors too often, people having a perceived lack of value to components we offer, competition from other events and others.
He proposed the 2004 Calendar of Events that we had modeled out previously. Our goal is to have a significant spring conference in SE Michigan, our summer program up north, a fall conference at another location, and the winter program with HISA.
For the summer conferences Helen thought we should try to link them with northern art fairs or other key events, because there are people that are not interested in golfing. This would open up exposure to other events. Jennifer wondered if the UP group of CIOs that meet monthly might offer some timing and event opportunities to present up there. As we discussed this, Jan suggested that we not set up a golf outing, but rather make golf available as well as other events. We explored options for venues up north, including Mackinaw Island, Harbor Springs/Petoskey/Charlevoix. Muskegon has an amusement park that could be another draw. Alicia wondered if our draw at Shanty Creek, or lack of northerners in attendance was an issue because it is further from them. Traverse is wonderful, but an awkward option because it is far west.
Helen reminded us that we want to engage people in the west of the state. The group thought the fall conference would be a good time. Ron said that it would be great for a color tour of the state. We could coordinate this with other events in the area, like in Sagatuck. This would be great timing since we are still trying to engage people from that area to participate. Jeff offered to work the Saginaw area, since he is from there.
Jen is concerned we would compromise the attendance base and should be careful about asking the core attendees to travel from place to place throughout the state. The goal is to engage people working and living in that area. Rick is intrigued by the UP group that Dann mentioned. It is an area we haven’t tapped very well and it is comprised of CIOs of hospitals. He would like to see us “exploit” this in some way because we only have three members from the UP. Elaine may know the CIOs that manage these UP hospitals. What is the draw for them to add our event to theirs? (Upper Peninsula Healthcare Network). Rick suggested we have the CIOs create the program. What program elements would you want, that you could commit up to 5 people to attend?
Ron continued after stimulating the discussion with the 2004 goals and objectives. We’d like to increase our board functions to special events quarterly or bi-anually. WE’d liket o increase event attendance by 10%, create a tracking prcess to monitor active membership (shown by attendance at the events), plan and execute an annual (Spring?) conference, assess educational needs in the chapter’s area of service, and consider additional workshops, panels, after work meetings, collaborate with other organizations, table top display at two events per year.
Jennifer talked about an event that she is attending in Virginia that has several outside state HIMSS chapter sponsors. Helen thought that they may be fulfilling their sponsorship obligation in this way.
Other proposed ideas for 2004 include one company or hospital tour day per year, more short programs, benchmark against other organizations, increase recruitment to all committees, establish relationship with CEU provider, establish chapter certification program and exam.
Ron also created a committee report form that could be used by all committees. He also included the program checklist that will help facilitate program coordination.
Ron wondered if we wanted to wait until after the HIMSS National conference to meet bi-weekly. We will start meeting in March on Tuesday, March 2 again every other Tuesday. We will meet three times in March.
The spring program time frame should be May. Helen will call some people before the conference to see the opportunity to engage people for the May conference.
Elections/Officers
Helen reminded us that we need to begin working on this. Previously, Susan recommended we keep through 2 years. We need to set up an election committee to be able to respond to this, and must start acting on it. Elections occur in April and the position begins in July. How do we engage membership to vote? We can send ballots to their home or offer voting availability on the web site. Jennifer recommended that if we use the web site, we would have to send the information to each member to bring them to the web site. It would have to be a protected area of the web site to protect the integrity of the process. It would be fairly easy to set up otherwise. We are not sure the best mechanism for allowing voting.
ACTION ITEM: Helen will talk to Nancy about how this should be approached.
Jennifer also suggested that we could use an outside survey company, like Survey Monkey to run the survey if we were having problems using Telusys.
Chapter officers are elected, chairs are appointed by the President.
Rick wondered if anyone was receiving surveys from the web site. He hasn’t received any in over a year.
Suggestions for Future Agenda Items
MI-HIMSS Supermarket. This would be a mini-exposition of Michigan vendors. We would group by technology, which is where the Supermarket concept comes from—for example, CPOE vendors are in one area, EMR vendors in another, Security is in another, etc. We would bring in vendors and allow them to present separately, perhaps even a technology face-off, as well as provide the expo. We expressed some concern regarding HIMSS National feelings about this type of event.
HIMSS Speaker Assistance Program.
Meetings
Meetings are held every other Tuesday, beginning the first Tuesday of the month.
Upcoming meetings include:
Tuesday, March 2
Tuesday, March
Tuesday,
Meeting Locations
Our meetings are currently held by phone or
at Reliance Software Systems, 30500 Northwestern Highway, Suite 415, Farmington
Hills. Main phone: 248-865-7850 or
877-735-9273.
Reliance is on the north side of Northwestern
between Inkster and 13 Mile Road in the North Valley Office Building.
|
From
the North:
Take Telegraph (US24) South to 13 Mile Road. Turn right (West) on 13 mile to
Northwestern (M10). Make a "Michigan Left" onto Northwestern,
heading South-East. You will see our building on the left (East). |
30500 Northwestern Highway
If you need to contact someone for directions
or information, contact Alicia Brown at 248-496-4983 (cell) or Reliance
Software Systems at 248-865-7850 or 877-735-9273.
Please participate. If you can’t attend in person, dial in!
Toll Free Dial in Number: (866)680-0146
PARTICIPANT CODE: 297455
Host: Helen Hill