1:00 - 2:00 p.m.

Plenary Session

Ten Paradigm Shifts in Healthcare
Healthcare in the United States is an annual $1.5 trillion dollar business today, and is expected to nearly double by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Ten paradigm shifts will occur in this decade, creating the potential for a train wreck or for a more efficient healthcare delivery and financing system.

Session objectives:

• List the ten paradigm shifts that will occur in this decade, and explain the demographic, economic and supply factors
• Explain how the U.S. manages and finances healthcare risk
• Discuss methods for processing healthcare transactions and their impact on the U.S. healthcare system
  

Overview of Healthcare Security Requirements: The Need to Develop a Standardized Approach
This session will provide an overview of the major security standards and regulations for the healthcare industry. Also discussed will be the NIST/URAC Workgroup that is looking at creating a national security standard for healthcare.

Session objective:

• Describe the major security standards, including the HIPAA Security Rule, federal agency requirements, ISO 17799, The URAC Security Accreditation Program and SSE-CMM

Lisa Gallagher, Senior VP, URAC & Ron Ross, PhD, Director, NIST

Healthcare 2013
The speaker will examine two potential views of the healthcare industry in the year 2010: a free market model or one with heavy government intervention.

Session objectives:

• Describe future technology trends and healthcare
• Explain how to avoid the pitfalls of technology trends, such as jumping the gun on new technologies without first having the infrastructure in place
• Discuss the future need for system standardizations and data set standards
• List the needs that will drive healthcare economics and technology advances
• Identify how to predict and assess what the healthcare market really will be in the future and how we can start planning for it now

Sean D'Arcy, Information Technology Strategic Services Consultant, Healthlink

Medication Errors and Patient Safety
During 2001 and 2002, medication safety pharmacists at Duke University Hospital worked with a local software firm to develop and implement an online reporting process for adverse drug events (ADE). ADEs include medication errors, potential errors and non-preventable adverse drug reactions.

Session objectives:

• Describe the features of the ADE system used by Duke University Hospital
• Explain how the system has helped improve patient safety
• Describe the technological features of the software used to support online reporting

John Kessler, Assistant Director of Pharmacy, Duke University Medical Center & Richard Low, CEO, Topsail Technologies

Session objectives:

• Explain how to analyze security risks, quantify those risks and determine the best methods to lessen risks prior to attacks and loss of information
• Describe how to document and show potential cost savings and protection against loss without wasting money on unneeded technologies
  

HIT Industry: Past, Present & Future
The HIMSS Leadership Survey has a rich tradition of gaining perspective on the healthcare information technology industry from leading IT executives. Over the past 14 years, IT executives have been asked to provide data on the industry's current priorities, barriers, use of outsourcing, spending and staffing. Respondents are also asked to project how the industry will change in the course of the next two years. Complementing this data is the HIMSS HIT Forecast, in which leading healthcare executives give their projections on the impact that technology will have on healthcare in the next five years.

Session objectives:

• Describe today's healthcare information technology "hot button" issues
• Explain what the future holds for these issues
• Discuss the impact of these issues on healthcare IT professionals

Connecting for Health - Improving Health and Health Care Across the United States Through the Use of Standards and Technology
The Markle Foundation sponsored the Connecting for Health Project in 2002-2003 which convened some of the best minds in the country to study and produce recommendations for improving health and healthcare through the use of data standards and best practices for privacy and security. The project investigated working examples that are using innovative solutions for privacy and security in an electronic healthcare environment.

Session objectives:

• Describe the major findings of the Connecting for Health Project
• Explain how the use of data standards will improve health and healthcare
  

Carol Diamond, MD, MPH, Managing Director, Information Technologies for Better Health Program

Lessons Learned from Compliance Collaboration
Parente Randolph is a healthcare consulting firm currently assisting over 65 clients in reaching HIPAA compliance. These clients come from acute care, senior living settings, retail pharmacy, home health agencies and behavioral health organizations. Hear about actual case studies on HIPAA implementation, with a panel discussion between a Parente Randolph rep and two clients.

Session objectives:

• Describe the issues faced by different types of healthcare organizations in the case studies, and how they were resolved
• Apply the lessons learned to your organization's compliance efforts

Ivan Barrick, PhD, Director, Healthcare Operations Improvement Practice, Parente Randolph, Ed Roman, Chief Information Officer and Chief Privacy Officer, Moses Taylor Hospital & Larry Zook, VP, Resources, Landis Homes Retirement Community

e-Disease Management: Managing Disease over the Horizon
The management of chronic and debilitating disease continues to be a major challenge for the healthcare industry, but the Internet offers a tremendous opportunity to meet this challenge more efficiently and effectively.

Session objectives:

• Explain the operational challenges, regulatory hurdles and liability risks associated with using the Internet for the operation of a formal disease management program
• Describe how to design and operate a program to offer disease management services via the Internet through the use of industry standards and best practices

William Shenton, Partner, Poyner & Spruill, LLP & Karen McKeithen Schaede, Esq.,

Can We Protect Patients from Themselves?
In our litigious society, it is an understatement to say that healthcare providers are increasingly subject to suit. Patients enter hospitals and immediately begin taking notes of providers' names and the dates/times certain medications are given.

Session objectives:

• List the most common types of patient safety events
• Define ways to minimize potential liability for such events
• Identify sources of standards and guidance regarding patient safety
• Identify situations in which a search of a patient, room or belongings may be conducted

Angie Burnette, Counsel, Alston & Bird, LLP

9:00 - 10:00 a.m.
Plenary Session

Session objectives:

• Describe how we can improve the flow, use and availability of information over the next five years
• Explain the role NCHICA and its members can play in advancing the use of IT in healthcare
• Identify how HIPAA will improve healthcare IT

Harry Reynolds (Blue Cross & Blue Shield of NC)

HIPAA Privacy Implementation for Employer Group Health Plans
"Small" employer group health plans face an April 2004 compliance deadline under the HIPAA Privacy Rule. "Large" plans had to meet the April 2003 deadline. Small plans can benefit from the "lessons learned" by large plans.

Session objectives:

• Explain how to assess the HIPAA Privacy Rule's direct impacts on the employer health plan
• Describe the HIPAA Privacy Rule's indirect impacts on non-plan functions of human resource departments, such as: amending plan documents, developing a Notice of Privacy Practices, adopting and implementing policies and procedures, training and business associate relationships
  

Michael Hubbard, Partner, Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan, LLP

Return to the Land of 10,000 Databases: A Two-Year Update on MD Anderson's Web Initiatives
Over the past two years, MD Anderson has successfully deployed a comprehensive and intuitive results viewer that is PACS enabled and uses web services and XML to pull data from dozens of disparate systems for the benefit of 700 clinicians. It also provides nearly one-half of its patients with a portal customized for their individual needs that includes secure messaging to providers, prescription renewals, bill presentation, schedule information and patient educational material uniquely configured to their disease. It's web-enabled EMR is providing nursing documentation throughout its inpatient units along with order entry capability.

Session objectives:

• Describe which web initiatives demonstrated significant value and a positive ROI within a relatively short time frame
• Explain why some of the initiatives were unsuccessful
• Apply the lessons learned to your organization's web initiatives

Richard Pollack, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Provider Order Entry: First Year's Experience
In 1999, the Institute of Medicine estimated that as many as 98,000 people die annually from medical errors caused in hospitals. Provider Order Entry (POE) has been identified as one of several vital solutions to decrease patient injury due to errors associated with prescription, transcription and execution of medical orders.

Session objective:

• Discuss critical success factors in implementing Provider Order Entry (POE)

Lauren Kearns, MSN, RN, Clinical Systems Analyst, UNC Health Care System & Kay Lytle, MSN, RN, Director of Nursing Informatics, UNC Hospitals

Session objectives:

• Describe where e-mail technology is headed in the healthcare industry
• Explain how traditional e-mail communications will need to change to keep pace with the HIPAA legislation
• Describe advances in encryption, audit trails and authentication of e-mail messaging
• List key components necessary in implementing a secure messaging solution
• Explain how a secure messaging solution can complement "pull" or portal solutions already in place
  

Roger May, e.Health Product Line Manager for Portals and Secure Infrastructure, Siemens e.Health/HDX

CDISC: Collaborative Standardization Activities to Streamline Regulated Clinical Research
There is increasing support within the biopharmaceutical industry to develop data interchange standards to streamline the flow of data from various sources (including CROs, clinical laboratories and data collection tools) to the regulatory reviewers of submissions for the approval of new therapies.

Session objectives:

• Describe the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium's (CDISC) efforts to develop standards for electronic data exchange
• Discuss the progress made by the technical committee co-chaired by FDA, CDISC and HL7
  

Rebecca Kush, PhD, President, CDISC

PDAs in Nursing
The North Carolina Nurses Association (NCNA) passed a reference proposal at the 2002 convention entitled PDA Use in Nursing. This reference proposal recognized the importance of nurses having up-to-date information to provide quality patient care, using PDA technology and applications.

Session objective:

• Describe the impact of PDA technology on nursing practice

Eleanor Hunt, MSN, RN, Informatics Consultant, Toolshed Technologies, Inc.

2:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Plenary Session

Session objectives:

• Describe the ongoing and emerging challenges faced by the public health sector
• List current activities underway to meet these challenges
• Discuss what needs to be done to improve the public health system

Disaster Recovery in Healthcare
One of the most challenging requirements in the HIPAA Security Rule is developing an information disaster recovery plan. In non-healthcare environments, the main driving forces for developing such a plan are the value of the information and the risks associated with vulnerabilities to the information technology environment. For healthcare organizations, there is the added cost of protecting the privacy of the information and the penalties for the loss of data.

Session objectives:

• List the elements of a disaster recovery plan
• Describe the factors to be considered by organizations of different sizes
• Identify the added responsibilities for healthcare organizations

James Murphy, Consultant, Eolas

Open Source Electronic Health Records
Open source products provide a way for a community to create and manage aspects of information system functions that are of common interest. The healthcare industry has been developing various information content standards for use in electronic health records (EHRs). Currently, the level of usage of these content standards and EHRs is low, particularly among small provider practices. One important barrier to the adoption of EHRs is the lack of a practical delivery mechanism: open source EHRs would provide this mechanism.

Session objectives:

• Describe the current approaches to open source EHRs that are emerging from the industry
• Discuss the benefits and challenges of an open approach to EHRs
• Explain how an open source EHR approach "fits" into the business, technical, legal and social framework of healthcare
• Describe how the American Academy of Family Physicians' approach to open source EHR works
• Identify a roadmap for the healthcare industry to adopt this approach

David Kibbe, MD, Chairman, Canopy Systems & Dave Kirby, Information Security Officer, Duke University Health System

The North Carolina Immunization Registry
In 1998, the North Carolina Immunization Branch partnered with NCHICA to develop PAiRS (Provider Access to Immunization Records Securely), a demonstration registry project. Today, a statewide, web-based, fully functional immunization registry is quickly becoming a reality in North Carolina. NCHICA has remained involved in the registry project and the past year has seen much progress in bringing the project to completion. This presentation will outline registry progress to date as well as provide a demo of the system to audience members.

Session objectives:

• Explain how PAiRS helped in the programmatic transition to the NCIR and other activities to ready providers for the introduction of the registry
• Describe where the NCIR stands with regards to HIPAA
• Discuss the NCIR and possible links with electronic medical records and HL7 interface

Walter Kemper, Technical Project Leader, NC DHHS Immunization Branch; and Beth Rowe-West, Immunization Branch Head, NC DHHS Division of Public Health

Session objectives:

• Explain the necessity for confidentiality, integrity and availability in any computer system to protect against legal and financial losses
• Describe the latest technologies available to assure confidentiality, integrity and availability
• Identify methods for creating a "feedback loop" whereby policies are tested and monitored in an entity's real world setting, which can lead to constant improvement in security and loss management
  

Promoting User Adoption is Key to Successful Healthcare Technology Implementations
Focusing on user adoption is the key to successful ambulatory technology implementation strategies. The approach discussed in this presentation centers on a multi-phased implementation, with each phase providing additional value to clinicians. Demonstrating an electronic medical record solution's value early in the implementation process promotes user adoption, which leads to the electronic record becoming populated with valuable historical patient information. The long-term benefits emerge as the quantity and quality of patient information within the solution increases.

Session objectives:

• Explain how user adoption determines the solution's success
• Discuss why clinician workflow challenges must drive system selection
• Describe how each implementation phase must demonstrate value to clinicians
• Explain how to avoid implementing too much of the solution at once
• Discuss how long-term benefits emerge as database population increases
  

Franklin Maddux, MD, Chairman & CEO, Gamewood, Inc.

9:30 - 10:30 a.m.

Plenary Session

The Coming Flood of Clinical Information
The healthcare information industry has survived many challenges in providing clinical information in the form of numeric lab data and narrative text reports. Now, fundamental revolutions in looking at the patient, both
on a body organ level as well as at an individual cellular level, are about to change what we need from our information systems.

Session objectives:

• List some of the key advances in imaging and genomics
• Explain what these new advances imply for healthcare information technology in the next decade

Donald Rucker, MD, VP & Chief Medical Officer, Siemens

Update from the CMS Office of HIPAA Enforcement
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is responsible for enforcing the HIPAA Transactions & Code Sets, Identifiers and Security standards. Federal law required most health plans, clearinghouses and providers to be compliant with the HIPAA transactions standards by October 16, 2002, unless they filed for a one-year extension. Those who are not compliant and did not file for the extension may be subject to statutory penalties.

Session objectives:

• Describe the current status of the HIPAA Transactions & Code Sets, Identifiers, Security and Enforcement standards
• Explain how CMS is assisting the industry to ensure compliance
• Discuss how the complaint-driven process is working a year after the transactions standard became effective and one month before most of the industry has to comply